Solved Lenovo USB dongle (RTL8153) not working

Hi all,

I have a weird problem with my Lenovo Yoga laptop, AMD platform.

This is a Lenovo 3.0 Ethernet adaptor, PN RTL8153 which suggests a Realtek 8153 IC.

If I plug it in, it gets recognised and gets drivers. If I plug an ethernet cable in it, I have lights, Windows says "identifying" but won't get an IP address from my router. If I set one up myself, I can only ping the laptop itself, it won't see anything on my network.

IPCONFIG would show a 169 IP when automatic DHCP is set, or the IP I have manually set if manual.

Things I've tried
- Reset the network
- Reset the firewall
- Uninstall device (and driver), restarted and let Windows install again with WiFi connected
- Downloaded Realtek drivers and installed

Still the same.

I then tried it on my Windows 10 Desktop machine and it works :) - Clearly I double checked by physically unplugging the motherboard ethernet cable while using the dongle!

I'm puzzled. I am on Windows 11 22H2

Current driver is "1153.13.20.420" from 27/07/23. Previous one was just a couple of months behind. Dongle is seen as "Lenovo USB Ethernet".

Any ideas please?
Thanks!

I found the solution.

I plugged it back on my desktop W10 and noticed it was using a MICROSOFT driver from 2015.

So I went back to Windows 11, "upgraded" manually to a 2015 MICROSOFT driver and it works now. This is so bad