Driver conflict between realtek devices?

I have recently bought an ASUS PCE-AC51 PCIe WiFi card which works completely fine, until rebooting a few times. Then the device either won't get detected anymore (disappears in device manager) or causes blue screens referring to the drivers, OR even cause it to give Error Code 12 in Device Manager (having "not enough free resources").

The funny thing is, the drivers from this card are from Realtek, but the onboard Ethernet drivers are also from Realtek. Could it be that there are driver conflicts between these 2? Because frankly in prebuilts I have always seen WiFi and Ethernet drivers to be from 2 different manufacturers (eg. Qualcomm Ethernet and Ralink WiFi)

So far, I have not tested the WiFi card in a motherboard with a non-Realtek Ethernet chip, but does all of this mean there is in fact a driver conflict because it's 2 times the same manufacturer, or is the card simply defective? Anyone else having similar issues?


PS: Updating BIOS didn't work and drivers are taken from manufacturer's websites.

Boards I'm talking about: AsRock A320M and eMachines ET1870, both having Realtek GBE Family controller as ethernet.


EDIT: I have another board with Qualcomm Atheros ethernet drivers, but I couldn't test the wifi card on there yet. If it works flawlessly it should prove my point, right?

Since it causes BSODs, can you collect a log following the directions in BSOD - Posting Instructions - Windows 10 Forums ?

Realtek makes a ton of different devices so having multiple Realtek drivers on your system isn't necessarily a problem - I personally have Realtek sound, card reader, and GbE on my system. Since the behavior is inconsistent I would lean towards there being a problem with the WiFi card hardware.

There was only one single BSOD, referring to the WiFi drivers according to BlueScreenViewx64. All the rest was just the device not being detected or having the Resources errors.

I already knew the temporary workaround of disabling Ethernet device in BIOS or Device Manager, but that isn't a fix + it only worked temporarily, the errors occured afterwards again.

The boards also have Realtek Audio, but still, that is an audio driver, not for internet.

So far I believe it is either a conflict or a hardware defect, I've already issued an RMA request to ASUS, fingers crossed that might solve everything.

There is no other free pcie x1 expansion slot. There are only 2 and one of them is blocked by the GPU. But since the exact issue occurs on 2 different motherboards, I doubt it is related to the slot.

Caledon Ken said:

Hi Sonar637

Can you go into BIOS and disable Lan Nic? Should eliminate drivers for Ethernet from being loaded.

Have you tried a different expansion slot?

DUDE THANK YOU SO MUCH. You saved me from the problem I've been facing for years like it was so bad. I have ASUS PCE-AC51 and it was frequently giving me BSoD and restarts into dysfunctional wifi, there's "Realtek ... ... (very long name I can't remember)" card showing in Device Manager. Then I had to restart my PC again to have my Asus card in Device Manager again. I think it was updating my wifi driver (to a wrong one!!) without my permission, even when I disable all the updates.

Finally, after disabling LAN card in BIOS, it works fine! I stress tested it and since a few days it works completely fine! Looks like it's solved. Having BSoD while playing online games were a torture