Fixing VALORANT crashing my network drivers

In a sweet irony, given I published a post about Evaluating kernel level anti-cheats as a consumer, some aspect of VALORANT, likely Vanguard, ended up soft bricking my internet whenever I tried to play the game.

While this was a soft brick - only happened when playing the game, and it would fix itself after exiting the game - it was incredibly frustrating to run into. Here is what I learned and what eventually fixed it.

Synopsis

• Opening VALORANT, hopping into the practice range, resulted in my networking failing after around ~10-90 seconds.
• It crashes both my Ethernet, and my WiFI. My Ethernet connection was my only active connection.
• The game itself would report the network disconnecting. Nothing interesting there, though.
• The ethernet restored itself after exiting the game, after around ~2 minutes.

What appears to have been the final fix

Updating Realtek driver to the latest version from Realtek themselves¹, and switching from NDIS to NetAdapterCX. Unclear if the switch in driver technology made any discernible difference.

Relevant machine information

• Windows 11
• MSI MAG B560 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX LGA1200 Motherboard

Attempts to fix the issue

• Flashing BIOS to the latest version,
• Updating Realtek driver to the latest version provided by my motherboard manufacturer,
• Updating WiFi & Bluetooth drivers from Intel,
• Updating NVIDIA Graphics drivers,
• Enabling Core Isolation (it was disabled because of my racing wheel’s drivers not supporting it),
• Reinstalling Riot Vanguard,
• TPM & Secure Boot was already enabled.

Further information

The following is visible within Event Viewer. This was captured after updating all drivers from Intel, NVIDIA & the motherboard manufacturer, but before updating the ethernet driver from Realtek.

The network interface "Realtek PCIe 2.5GbE Family Controller" has begun resetting.  There will be a momentary disruption in network connectivity while the hardware resets. Reason: The network driver detected that its hardware has stopped responding to commands. This network interface has reset 1 time(s) since it was last initialized.

The description for Event ID 5007 from source Netwtw14 cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event: 

\Device\NDMP8
Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz

The message resource is present but the message was not found in the message table

Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz : Has encountered an internal error and has failed.

Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz : Has determined that the network adapter is not functioning properly.

Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz : Has encountered an internal error and has failed.