Network Degrading - Card seems to lock up

Lightening fast network speed has slowed to a crawl. The machine has two wireless network cards:
-TP-Link 450 Mbps Wireless N adaptor
-Ralink RT61 Turbo

With the "Local Area Connection Status" window open I could see the computer receiving a good volume of download and then it would stop. Sometimes it might recover briefly, other times not. To complete a download, I had to disable/enable the network card and then a burst of good download activity before it stalled again. This is a Win7/64 machine. Another Win7/64 machine on the same network is having no problem.

Checked that the latest drivers are installed. Disabled both cards in Device Manager. Enabled the Ralink card when it came active it also brought along "Microsoft Virtual WiFi miniport adaptor." No clue why this popped up. I have an internet connection (a very slow one - 0.5-1 Mbps download with a 50Mbps connection to the ISP - Verizon FIOS). Although I have a connection, in the system tray there is a big red "X" on the wireless icon. Don't know if that is a clue or a quirk

Physically removed the NIC cards, removed the power cord, powered on without the cord to drain any residual memory. Reinstalled one at a time. No change, except Windows is complaining about the driver on the TP-Link card. Will try to find a fresh copy of that driver that was originally downloaded from the Internet.

Have scanned for spyware, virusus, malicious software, System Mechanic - no change.

Any and all suggestions welcome!

I found what I believe are newer drivers, but when I try to install them, although I get a message saying drivers installed successfully, in Device Manager, they still have the same version and date 9.2.0.310 and 2/2010, while the drivers I found are from 2011 and 2013. When I try to use the adaptor it fails. I run the troubleshooter, which says, "Windows couldn't automatically bind the IP protocol stack to the network adaptor."

Have you tried using Windows update to find the drivers?

The Msoft Virtual WiFi miniport adaptor comes with Msoft WHQL approved drivers, it's only for setting up a hosted wireless network.

If you can post a screen shot of the ipconfig/all from this machine it may be helpful for diagnosing this problem. :)

All Windows Updates are current and installed.

Here is the screenshot:

The connection looks good here, valid IP etc. Looks like you disabled the miniport adaptor here.

From what I have read this is a driver problem and this Ralink NIC is fairly out of date, doesn't support 802.11n etc.

Use the link near the top of the page.

Download Ralink RT61 Turbo WLAN Adapter Driver 2.1.0.0 for Windows 7 64 bit, Windows 8 64 bit

boconnel said:

I found what I believe are newer drivers, but when I try to install them, although I get a message saying drivers installed successfully, in Device Manager, they still have the same version and date 9.2.0.310 and 2/2010, while the drivers I found are from 2011 and 2013. When I try to use the adaptor it fails. I run the troubleshooter, which says, "Windows couldn't automatically bind the IP protocol stack to the network adaptor."

The TP-Link card had worked previously and I can't understand why it has degraded. I found a newer driver, but for some reason it won't bind to the IP stack in the network adaptor.

boconnel said:

boconnel said:

I found what I believe are newer drivers, but when I try to install them, although I get a message saying drivers installed successfully, in Device Manager, they still have the same version and date 9.2.0.310 and 2/2010, while the drivers I found are from 2011 and 2013. When I try to use the adaptor it fails. I run the troubleshooter, which says, "Windows couldn't automatically bind the IP protocol stack to the network adaptor."

The TP-Link card had worked previously and I can't understand why it has degraded. I found a newer driver, but for some reason it won't bind to the IP stack in the network adaptor.

The network stack may be corrupted.

Run the file below which will reset the TCP/IP stack, reset winsock, flush the DNS, renew the IP etc. your machine will reboot automatically. Let me know if anything changes.

No luck with the IPResetAll fix.