October 19, 2019 1 min to read

Intel Wireless Adapter 9650 Issue and Solution

This is a description of an issue that I faced on my Acer Nitro 5 laptop, and how I solved it.

My laptop had developed an issue while streaming videos on the browser - Prime, Netflix, Vimeo etc. The video would stop to buffer very frequently even on the lowest quality settings, sometimes every minute.

It was interesting that I had not faced the same issue on my work laptop, or my phone or my home desktop.

In order to isolate the issue, I tried a couple of tests. The important test was the use of a USB WLAN . I borrowed the USB WLAN from my home desktop, configured it on my Acer Nitro, and disabled the built-in Wireless Adapter. This instantly solved the problem!

While I wondered whether my Acer laptop had a hardware issue, I though it may have been a driver update that caused the problem because the issue wasn’t seen when the laptop was new.

I did find an updated driver for Intel Wireless-AC 9650 that fixed the issue.

The version that had the issue was: 21.0.0.5.
The version that fixed the issue is: 21.40.2.2.