Several months ago, I purchased an Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6250 AGN wireless adapter off of ebay in order to significantly boost my wireless capabilities in correspondence with having recently purchased a new router. I made an earlier purchase of an internal mini-PCI-E-to-PCI-E 1x adapter, which has been shown to work perfectly on my other wireless adapters. I am using an MSI motherboard under the Z77 chipset, running Windows 8 (x64) and using a Sandy Bridge Intel i7-2600k processor. Having read the hardware supported by this adapter (although I cannot seem to locate such a page any longer), I thought that I was making a compatible purchase, but evidently I was wrong. Even after clean removals of the drivers and applications, the device fails to start with error code 10.
Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6250 AGN
This device cannot start. (Code 10)
{Operation Failed}
The requested operation was unsuccessful.
The adapter shows up under device manager with a yellow warning icon, and troubleshooting fails to fix the issue.
The Intel Manual Diagnostics application fails on the hardware test, stating that Wireless hardware is not bound to transport driver.
Under Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, however, the adapter works perfectly, as one might expect it to. I have access to both networks on my router, the 2.4Ghz band and the 5Ghz band.
I am aware of the following:
- non-OEM installation of the 6250 is unsupported by Intel.
- I should contact my original equipment manufacturer for information on chipset compatibility.
- proprietary drivers do not work under every circumstance, and one should consult the manufacturer's website for their device in order to get drivers.
If I don't get support for my issue in terms of any fix at all, I would at least appreciate some form of explanation for its incompatibility beyond the obvious lack of official support by Intel, be it an electrical issue, or that the driver software is simply designed to only support a limited range of hardware.
With the latter, it would be rather disappointing were the only thing preventing me from enjoying my Centrino 6250 a seemingly unjustified lack of general compatibility.