Hello everyone,

I got a TL-WN823N USB WLAN adapter for a pretty old laptop, after suggestions, in other communities, to do so as a replacement / solution for the internal wifi card's severe connectivity and instability issues. The issues I had, arose after automatic installation of Windows 10 version 1903 major update, that was impossible to roll back.

Back to the USB adapter, after disabling the internal wifi card and its drivers, I followed the official installation procedure and used the drivers provided in the CD-ROM that came along with the TP-Link device. After driver installation, reboot, and connection to the WLAN signal, the internet connection remained unstable (perhaps only better upload speeds and less frequent drop-outs, in comparison to the internal wifi card).

After 1-2 days, I decided to look for newer drivers on the TP-Link website, as a possible solution. Naturally, I followed the official installation guidelines again, that is, first uninstall the USB adapter's installed drivers, restart the computer, then install the new ones. Unfortunately, things got much, much worse.

Now I have no internet connection through the USB adapter. The Device Manager indicates no conflict, or driver problem or other issue with the TP-Link adapter. The wifi connection appears to work for the first website you visit after the driver installation and connection to local WLAN signal. After that, the wifi connection drops permanently, indicating no connection to the internet.

I tried clean unistalling, rebooting and reinstalling different versions of the drivers for the USB adapter I found on the TP-Link website, all to no avail, the same problem persists ever since. I had to resort to the internal wifi card to be able to post this message.

Before I return the USB adapter to the store for a refund, I'd like to ask here if anyone has had or heard of such problems and if they found some solution.

Weird things about the TP-Link adapter version and its drivers

1. The driver version for the TP-Link adapter under Device Manager>Network Adapters (which is the version of the rtwlanu.sys file) does not change, regardless of which downloaded driver installation package I decide to install. The default Microsoft version, right after plugging the adapter in and before installing a downloaded driver is 1030.27.425.2018. After installing ANY driver package, it's always 1030.2.731.2015.
2. The model hardware version of the USB adapter is different according to the packaging (TL-WN823N(EU) Version 3.0) and the engraving on the adapter itsself (WN823N V2). I wouldn't mention it, but it's pretty important, when you have to choose which drivers to download and install!

Laptop System details
Model: Medion P7612 / MD97860 (usually these were rebranded MSI laptops or similar with driver support from Medion)
default internal WiFi Card: Azurewave/Realtek RTL8191SE
No blutetooth capabilities whatsoever
OS: came with Windows Vista 32bit + upgrade to Windows 7, later updated to Windows 10. current version: Win10 x64 version 1909 with almost all updates installed

Connection instability description (both with the older Realtek internal card and the TP-Link adapter)
Ever since installing the Windows 10 version 1903 major update last August, I've been experiencing long ping times, significantly lower speeds than available from ISP provider and worst of all, frequent and very annoying random internet connection breaks/dropouts (during which, the laptop's network settings would indicate it was the router's fault, i.e. "Connected to network-name, no internet"). All other devices (smartphone,tablet, other laptops) work perfectly with the router, so that's not the cause. These problems remained even after the first attempt to install and use the TP-Link USB adapter, as mentioned above. A trial with a LAN cable is currently not possible.