Ralink RT3090 WiFi Adapter Compatibility With WiFi 7?

[lpowelllap]

I have an old HP Pavilion dv6 laptop running Windows 10. It has a Ralink RT3090 802.1 1b//g/n WiFi adapter.

Despite its age, I have never had any previous issues connecting over WiFi to my home network; however, I recently upgraded my router to WiFi 7 (Sagemcom F@ST 5598 WiFi 7 hub) and now the laptop will not connect to the internet. It appears to connect wirelessly to the 2.4GHz "legacy" channel on the network ("No internet, secured") but network diagnostics indicate "The network adapter does not have a valid IP configuration" and the WiFi adapter states "Unidentified Network". The WiFi symbol does not appear in the taskbar. 

I have tried restarting the router, resetting the network stack, disabling and then re-enabling the network adapter and trying a fixed IP address, but none of these seem to have worked.

All my other devices, including some legacy devices, work fine with the new router. The problem is only with the HP laptop/Ralink WiFi network adapter.

Has anybody else come across this and has a fix for it, or is it simply the case that the Ralink adapter is so old that it just cannot communicate properly with the router?

[BeemerBiker]

This is a known problem and Google's AI  has a detailed solution.

Please let me know if it works and if you had to change any of the instructions

https://share.google/aimode/28EOnaHAs3QKrYLS0

[lpowelllap]

Hi and thanks for your input. Out if desperation I tried installing an older Ralink OEM driver for the WiFi adapter from Windows Update Catalog, and lo and behold the adapter connected straight away! I didn't even need to use the 2.4GHz Legacy Network to connect successfully!

I believe the previous driver may have been a generic Windows one, and the issues may have stemmed from that even though it had worked just fine with my previous router.

[BeemerBiker]

I am glad you got it working.  Some older laptops the bios has a list of WiFi adapters and will block WiFi if it cannot identify the adapter.   When installing missing drivers for windows 10 or 11 one can go back as far as windows 7, 64bit to get a compatible drivers.

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@lpowelllap wrote:

Hi and thanks for your input. Out if desperation I tried installing an older Ralink OEM driver for the WiFi adapter from Windows Update Catalog, and lo and behold the adapter connected straight away! 

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I have found it difficult to install from the Windows Update Catalog and I worked up this description of the problem:

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You found a cab file that you need to install. The cab file is in the Microsoft Update Catalog here.

Install through the Device Manager

Spoiler

1. At C:\SWSetup, create two folders Downloads and Drivers
2. Download the driver.cab file to c:\SWSetup\Downloads.
3. Extract it:
4. Right-click the CAB file and choose Extract All.. ., or
5. Using the Windows commmand prompt, paste this command:

   expand -F:* C:\SWSetup\Downloads\driver.cab C:\SWSetup\Drivers
   
   

6. Open Device Manager.
7. Right-click the device that needs the driver and select Update driver.
8. Select Browse my computer for drivers.
9. Browse to the folder where you extracted the CAB file.
10. Make sure Include subfolders is checked.
11. Click Next

A walkthrough of installing a known WebCam driver is here
Note that the driver is already "known" so there is no need to search for the folder as in the above .cab instructions.

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If you found a better source somewhere on the internet please let me know.