Hello!

If this has been solved before, please point to the appropriate thread. Thanks.

I have a 7" tablet HP Stream 7 running Windows 10 32-bit version 22H2. I had not installed updates for too long, so I decided to slowly install them. While I was able to connect at my home Wi-Fi network, some time I noticed that I was disconnected. I clicked on the network icon to show all wireless networks in range and I saw that mine (and a couple others) were not listed, the remaining ones were there. So the wireless adapter was working but was not detecting specific SSIDs including mine for some reason. I thought this was due to some advanced security settings (the router was replaced a few months ago) and probably some update messed with the wireless driver making the adapter unable to connect to such networks. I opened Device Manager and tried to manually reinstall the older working driver. On the list there were two drivers to select, one directly from Realtek and one from Microsoft. Neither of them made any difference. I even tried to reinstall the wireless driver by running the setup from the official one I had downloaded from HP, nothing. My SSID was not detected. All other computers in the house, my smartphone and my TV had no problem detecting the SSID and connecting to that. After a little Google search I found that many others have problem connecting to wireless networks using channel 12 or 13. I checked with the application Wi-Fi Analyzer on my smartphone, my SSID was indeed channel 12. So I tried to change the channel. My router doesn't have the option to change the channel, neither it has the option to select country as suggested on some sites. It game me only the choice of 2.4Ghz only, 5GHz only or 2.4GHz and 5GHz which is the default. Since most devices at home at 2.4GHz only, I chose that and the Wi-Fi channel changed within the channel range 1-11, so I could connect from my tablet. I also noticed the option to separate the 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSIDs, so I selected both 2.4GHz and 5GHz with separate SSID, and this worked as well, since it changed the 2.4GHz channel within the 1-11 range.

Although this is a very good workaround, to separate the 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSIDs, I would appreciate if there is a fix to make my wireless adapter able to connect to Wi-Fi channels 12 and 13 again. Before you rush to reply, I remind you IT IS NOT a driver issue since I had the SAME driver installed before and worked properly. It must be some security setting in Windows 10. If anyone knows what to do to fix it, please post. Thank you in advance.

PS: Please don't recommend to uninstall recent updates. There are too many, I don't know which is the culprit and I don't want to risk any more damage by uninstalling the wrong update.