Problems you may come across during the driver installation of the TP-Link wireless adapter

For some TP-Link wireless adapters, some Windows operation systems have equipped with the built-in inbox driver, which means that you could plug and play.

While for others, you need to install the adapter’s driver by yourself. And you will go through following procedures:

1. Detect the wireless adapter on your computer

2. Find and download the driver of this adapter

3. Install the driver on your computer manually.

Following are some problems you may come across during these procedures.

How to confirm that the wireless adapter has been detected by your computer?

Make sure you have plug the wireless adapter into the interface of your computer correctly. Then you can go to Device Manager to make further check. It would show as an unknow device if the wireless adapter has been detected, as the following picture.

Where to find the driver of this wireless adapter for your computer?

Firstly, you should check the operation system of your computer to deploy the wireless adapter. Then you can find and download the driver that fit for your operation system on TP-Link official website. Here we take Archer T4U as an example:

Go to the adapter catalog of TP-Link official website and find the model of Archer T4U: http://www.tp-link.com/download-center
2. Go to the Support page of Archer T4U, as the following picture.

3. Choose the hardware version and go to the Drive tab, then you can find the suitable driver of this adapter according to the operation system of your computer, as the following picture.

What should you do before you try to install a new adapter?

If you have installed the old driver before and want to update it to the latest, you need to first uninstall the old driver totally from your computer and then reinstall the new driver

1. Go to Control Panel > Uninstall a program,find the TP-Link adapter driver, and then uninstall it, as the following picture.

2. Run the installation file “setup.exe” to install the new driver.

3. If this driver cannot be installed, please try to scan your PC and see whether it has virus.

Installation stuck during the drive installation

Normally it will take about 3~5 minutes to finish the installation, but sometimes it may take far more time about 15 minutes, especially when you install the driver on an old computer. Thus, please be patient even if it seems that the installation stuck at a specific percent for some time.

But if the installation stuck more than 20 minutes, please contact TP-Link technical support team for further help: support@tp-link.com

How to confirm if the driver has been installed successfully?

1. Go to Device Manager > Network adapter, then choose the TP-Link wireless adapter and go to Properties, as the following picture.

2. The driver has been installed successfully when the status shows “This device is working properly”.

Error code pops up on the Device Manager catalog

If you come across error code on the Device Manager catalog, please uninstall the old driver on the Control Panel > Uninstall a program. Try download the latest driver from the TP-Link official website and reinstall it again.

For more information about error code, you could refer to this article provided by Microsoft:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/310123/error-codes-in-device-manager-in-windows