I wonder if you can help. I have a Lenovo H520 desktop with a Realtek RTL8188E Wireless LAN 802.11n PCI-E NIC wireless adapter. The H520 came with Windows 8. In January of this year I upgraded to Windows 8.1. After the upgrade the adapter could no longer find any networks. Lenovo support recommended 'refreshing' the computer which reverted it back to Windows 8. This solved the connectivity issue, but consequently I had to reinstall all programs/apps I had loaded since purchase.
Since then I have not dared try to upgrade to Windows 8.1 without being certain I had a Windows 8.1-compatible driver for this adapter. Lenovo's website indicates that my adapter is NOT compatible with Windows 8.1; however I just ran the Windows 81 Upgrade Assistant Device compatibility check and it states that my adapter IS compatible. I would like to upgrade, but REALLY don't want to experience what I went through in January again.
Can someone definitively advise if my adapter is Windows 8.1 compatible, or if there is a truly Windows 8.1 compatible driver for my adapter? Hi William, This issue might occur if the wireless LAN driver for the wireless adapter is not compatible with Windows 8.1. As far as the latest updates for the wireless LAN driver at Lenovo’s website are concerned, they have released latest Realtek wireless driver for Windows 8.1. Refer to the link to find out the details on their website: Also, there are different users using Lenovo H520 and Realtek wireless adapter have resolved their issue by installing the latest driver at Realtek or driver updates at Lenovo. Refer to the link and follow the suggestions posted by different user in response to this issue: Check if the issue still persists after downloading the driver from this.
Driver at Realtek website: Once, you upgrade to Windows 8.1, if the suggestions don’t work, you can also try installing the older version of driver for the wireless adapter and check if it fixes the issue. Follow the steps:. Press Windows and X keys together and select Device Manager. Locate the Network adapter driver and expand the driver icon. Right click on the driver icon. Select Update driver software.
Select Browse my computer for a driver software. Select “ Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer”.
Select the Realtek driver (that you may have downloaded or is already there on the hard drive) according to your device model and installed. If this does not work, follow the steps from ‘ a’ to ‘ c’ and select “ Search automatically for the updated driver”. If the issue still persists, you can post the same query on For reference: Please keep us posted on the issue.
I got my solution here: I executed Grazie’s instructions found at above link, with following modification:. Extracting 58248wl139h2007.2.0706.2012w800.zip yielded folder name “AZRE8188CEWin82007.2.0706.206” vice “58248wl139h2007.2.0706.2012w800” (did not matter in the long run).
Using device manager I uninstalled the driver 'Realtek RTL8188E Wireless LAN 802.11n PCI-E NIC'. I went into folder “AZRE8188CEWin82007.2.0706.206”, and ran 'Setup.' After restart, all was good! William J Boeh.