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I have suspected for a while now that the internal WiFi adapter of my laptop is shot (it stops working randomly until I manually disable and enable it), so I bought an external WiFi adapter (TP-Link Archer T4U) to fix this. However, when I don't have it plugged in, I would still like the internal adapter to switch on. So here is my question:

Is it possible to either use both adapters simultaneously (with the possibility to choose networks seperately on both cards), or to disable the internal adapter as soon as I plug the other in the USB port?

I have gotten the second solution to work under Debian using udev rules, but I can't seem to work it out under Windows 10.

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Try this:

First, you'll need to create a couple of batch files that disable and enable your internal wifi adapter. The Windows command that would do this is devcon and you will have to download it from Microsoft. Based on a quick read of the devcon.exe's subcommands you can disable and enable specific devices if you know their device names, which you can glean from devmgmt.msc or devcon.exe itself.

Then, wrap these batch files into a couple of Windows tasks from Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Task Scheduler. Test them to make sure they work by running them manually first.

Then:

  • Disconnect your external Wifi adapter.
  • Open Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer.
  • Open Windows Logs, then System on the left.
  • Connect your external Wifi adapter.
  • Refresh the log and look for events related to you plugging in the device (I've never done this, not sure what you will see or if you will see anything.)
  • When you find the event, right click it select "Attach a task to this event..." and attach the task you defined earlier that will disablethe internal Wifi adapter.
  • Disconnect your external Wifi adapter and then look for a disconnection event, and do the same thing.

Not 100% sure how well this would work, I've never tried it.

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