[seifrob]

Xist,
have you ever considered to
a) bring your notebook to closest computer shop, give them 20 (30) bucks and say "I need a complete reinstall and cleanup please? And also reconfigure this router please"
b) find a high school student, give him few bucks less and ask for the same?
It is not about "throwing 30 bucks away for fixing it". It is "saving $300 for not buying another crap when your decent notebook is only 5 years old"

You seem exceptionally "gifted" with computer stuff from what I read past years and this 19 pages. Hom much time did you spent with fruitless efforts to fix it? How much paid work could you do instead?

In our school I manage and fix about 50 notebooks of various make and age and 90% of errors is due misbehaving users, not hardware related problems.

My routers are entry-level donated routers I flashed with OpenWRT and since that - no problems. Routers are designed to just work and all your troubles sound like misconfiguration to me.