How to reinstate a missing wireless adaptor in Windows 10

I had similar situation where the network drivers and the hardware were fine (Device Manager listed all network adapters and Linux used the network just fine, but there was no network in Windows 10 and no Network Connections in network settings). My guess is that I had Cisco AnyConnect VPN installed in Windows 8.1 and then upgraded to Windows 10 where it all got messed up. Many users experienced that and there were many suggestions and none of them worked.

Eventually I had to run the following command to reset the absent network connections:

netcfg -d

The first time it failed and gave many errors. Then I tried netcfg -d command again and then it was successful (bizarrely). Then I rebooted and suddenly Windows 10 started picking up networks.

Now it can associate with WiFi AP securely but it still fails to get an IP address... well, at least something.

This is a known issue with Win 10 if you have older VPN software installed like Cisco or in my case Junos. What worked for me was to uninstall the VPN and reboot. However the articles out there suggest registry editing:

Windows 10 looses wifi after upgrade

Start CMD as an admin

reg delete HKCR\CLSID{988248f3-a1ad-49bf-9170-676cbbc36ba3} /va /f

next in the same CMD:

netcfg -v -u dni_dne

reboot and wifi should be back.

However I got the "registry key not found so I unstalled the VPN, reboot and wifi is back. Next I installed a new version from Win 10 store and everything works great!