Issue

Acer Swift SF315 wireless adapter (Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265) stopped working. In Windows network settings wireless doesn’t appear at all. Device manager shows the Wi-Fi adapter with an exclamation mark, and Device Status shows the following error: “Windows cannot verify the digital signature for the drivers required for this device. A recent hardware or software change might have installed a file that is signed incorrectly or damaged, or that might be malicious software from an unknown source. (Code 52)“

Removing the driver didn’t fix the issue. Windows was immediately re-installing the same driver with the same signature error.

Resolution

As a temporary fix, I disabled Driver Signature Enforcement in advanced Windows boot options. To show advanced boot options, hold Shift while clicking Restart in Start Menu. Then choose Troubleshooting > Start-up Settings, and finally, after reboot choose 7) Disable driver signature enforcement.

After booting without driver signature enforcement Wi-Fi adapter was working fine. Signature enforcement is only disabled until the next reboot, but in this particular case, the issue was resolved without doing anything else. After further reboots, Wi-Fi was functioning without any issues. Just to be safe, I reinstalled the driver with a version downloaded from Acer’s support website.

July 2020
Acer Swift SF315-52
Windows 10 Home