Intel 7265 wifi problems

[flyod]

im pretty new to debian and linux in general, so forgive me if i've overlooked something obvious but ive been struggling with this for a couple weeks.

i got an hp prodesk 400 for free and decided to build it into a replacement for my isp-provided router, mostly as a learning opportunity and also because i wanted a better router. i added a second pcie ethernet card and m.2 wifi.
during installation, onboard ethernet, pcie ethernet, and wifi were all detected. installed using ethernet and upon normal boot the wifi adapter didn't seem to exist anywhere on the system. tried installing again using the wifi adapter and everything worked fine. all adapters, including wifi still existed upon normal boot.

networkmanager says im connected to wifi, but any attempt to ping websites results in "temporary failure in name resolution" the option to scan for available networks is greyed out. if i disconnect from wifi it does not give me any options to reconnect just says "disconnected" in grey. seems like one time it said "device not ready". rebooting returns things to normal.
occasionally on a cold boot if i log in immediately wifi connects, ping works, and i've even been able to scan for other networks, but this only works for about 30 seconds at most.
both ethernet adapters work with no problems.

internet searches are sending me around in circles, other people have had similar problems but there seem to be a dozen different solutions and now im just confused. thought i'd try asking for help directly because ive been trying to get this working for a while. i'd appreciate any help!

[arzgi]

Hello!

Install inxi, and run in terminal

Code: Select all

arto@dell:~$ inxi -N
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Ethernet I218-LM driver: e1000e
  Device-2: TP-Link Archer T3U [Realtek RTL8812BU] type: USB
    driver: rtl88x2bu
arto@dell:~$ 

Post the result in code tags, black square in the top line, which starts with B.

[flyod]

Code: Select all

floyd@debian:~$ inxi -N
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver: r8169
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver: r8169
  Device-3: Intel Wireless 7265 driver: iwlwifi

(I didn't plan on the onboard ethernet and pcie ethernet being the same chipset, that was a coincidence that makes things even more confusing lol)

[flyod]

slight update, though probably not good news:
i reinstalled debian without connecting to the internet for just a basic command line system. after figuring out how to connect that to wifi it works a lot more reliably, i can ping websites all i want, i can connect and disconnect to different wifi networks. i managed to install lynx and access some websites, but iwlwifi crashes as soon as i try to download a file bigger than a few dozen megabytes. installed ssh server and connected to the machine from my main desktop and that crashed it almost immediately. some other people ive talked to think it may be a problem with the hardware itself or perhaps this computer's weird uefi firmware, which i would not doubt. i may fool around with it some more, but at this point i'm not hopeful the problem can actually be fixed.

[arzgi]

Do you have firmware-iwlwifi installed?

[flyod]

yep. and like i said, it seems to work fine until i try to download larger files. it also seemed to work more reliably connected to my phone's hotspot instead of my house wifi, but there's no possible way that the wifi signal itself or the router it's connected to could be causing it to crash right?
(currently reinstalling windows on the machine to rule out any hardware specific problems)

[flyod]

ok so i just finished reinstalling windows and wifi is even more unreliable there! it just immediately crashes as soon as you try to connect and then the device just disapears from the system. doesn't even show up under device manager until you reboot.

there's definitely something screwy going on with the m.5 port on this computer. i guess the rumors are true and it is hardware locked to a certain model of wifi module.
(for future reference if anyone else ever tries to do this it's an hp prodesk 400 g4 sff. don't waste as much time on it as i did)