I recently purchased an Afla awus051nh adaptor and I'm having what I feel like is a simple issue but I'm banging my head on against the wall. While I was doing my research before buying I got my best info from here so I felt like this was the place to go for some help. So I'm using it on a windows 8.1 machine and no matter what I do it falls off and then comes back like every 5 seconds. For the few seconds its up it seems fine I can see all the local wireless access points and it looks fine. This is using the 5.1.2.o driver. When I say it falls off its like uninstalling a reinstalling really fast, it even disappears from them device manager and network connections. Now when I plug it into my Windows 7 pro 64 machine it works as advertised. I've looked for a rogue service/Bios setting/Drivers/Power settings/ anything I can think of. Has anyone seen this before?
It looks like there is a newer driver 5.1.7.0 from ralink but I cannot seem to get the mediatek webs site to let me download it, and I can't find it anywhere else. Would anyone know where I could find it or why I keep getting the form incomplete message from the mediatek downloads page?
So I got my hands on the newer driver here: Ralink RT2870 / RT5372 / MT7610 Wireless Lan USB Device drivers v.5.01.07.0000 (Драйвера для сетевых адаптеров WI-FI 802.11) - 20 Октября 2013 - devDRIVERS.ru : Поиск драйвера по коду устройства Did not solve my problem. Although, I got mad and just left it on listening to it ding as it appeared and dissappeared from installed devices and it actually seemed to get better after a while? It still disconnects but I feel like it when I do certain things like up the network manager in windows. I was actually able to get it connected to my own network, of coarse it dropped off and disconnected and uninstalled and reinstalled itself a few times directly after. It's really weird.
It sounds like faulty hardware based on what it's doing, but since it works on Win7 kind of rules that theory out... Have you tried running it through a powered USB hub ? If it's on a laptop etc, it might be a power issue tied specifically with the Win8 driver. It might be an incompatibility with motherboard usb ports and/or Windows 8 handling USB differently to Win7. I don't own an 051NH yet so I can't really assess what's happening with any potentially sucky drivers in enough time to help you out with this problem, but I plan to later... I think the problem is that because Win 8.1 is so new and different in it's handling of drivers (ie, there isn't any 8.1 driver for the v1 NHR yet but there is for Win8) Things are going to take time on the driver front to mature. It's the price you pay for using a new OS with relatively new hardware. You may just have to wait for things to improve under Win 8.1, or revert to using Win7.
Thank you for the reply, I really needed some validation in my thinking. I had the same thought about the usb port (Brand new Ultra book) so I checked both those on my laptop and main desktop and both USB root hubs are set to 500mA per port (not even sure how to change that if you can). I'm with you on the win8.1, the driver for 051nh is the same win8 not 8.1. I noticed that when I turn the adapter to off in that new network manager (the one that pops in from the right hand side of screen) it does not disable the adapter and the light continues to flash with out a hang up. By doing this it works just fine with my linux VM machine so thats good news considering that the reason I purchased it. I think its probably some new process or service in 8.1 that the driver doesn't like,but at this point I couldn't come up with anything. If I find anything more solid I will let everyone know.
I know that Windows 8 behaves like a very different animal when it comes to it's drivers compared to Win Vista or 7. There are significant differences. One of the reasons I don't use it, that and not wanting to be afflicted with gorilla arm and all the metro crap. I'm happy with the hardware I've already got, using Win8 would be like entering a world of pain although I have tried it and it was a disaster. Not only for adapters, but for things like power management for gfx cards as well etc, meaning some stuff that while worked well on Vista or 7 without issue, now curiously does not without niggling problems. Some stuff got changed around in Win8 like kernel patch guard, which means even modifying .inf files for end users anymore is out of the window unlike Vista or 7. I would say, stick with 7 and just wait some more till things mature.... Funnily, the number of people currently using Win8 is still less than those people still using Vista. There are those that have tried it and gone back to the safe haven of 7 (like me), and then there are those that just won't touch it with a bargepole at all, not even if (like they're planning to) give it away for free. --- Double Post Merged, 29 Apr 2014 --- Having now aquired an 051NH myself, I can tell you it works fine under Windows 7 x64. (28/04/2014) not that that's any consolation. It uses the same driver as the 036NH, namely 5.1.9.0 which I am using and have uploaded here in the RT3070 thread to maybe help you more, but I'm not sure if any difference this will make over 5.1.7.0 as there isn't as yet a specific 8.1 driver. The problem is Windows 8 doesn't behave the same as 8.1 especially when it comes to wifi cards drivers where realtek also has their fair share of blue screens and problems under 8.1. I take it there is no Windows 8.1 specific driver yet of which the drivers are a completely different animal (NDIS 6.3) I have Windows 8, but it's doesn't qualify for the free Win 8.1 from the app store otherwise I would have been able to test this particular setup under 051NH. ;-) (lot's of people have wifi issues under Windows 8.1, your not alone) And the good news is a specific ralink 8.1 driver is due to be released soon.
I didn't have to fix anything, I'm on Windows 7 x64 and had choices, so I just downgraded back to 5.1.10.0/5.1.9.0/5.1.7.0 I wrote to media-tek tech support using the link provided to inform them about the drivers 5.1.11.0 being broken on Win7 x64 in detail and even provided several screen shots. Unfortunately I didn't receive any sort of reply, nor were the drivers ever pulled off the site. I would class that as bug reports simply being ignored. They must have had thousands of complaints about it as the driver seems broken for everybody whatever card. It's definitely the driver at fault, and not the UI, so downgrade (if you can) and send more bug reports in using the form on mediatek. Those on Win 8.1 might not have that luxury.
