Chinese or Realtek; can't connect with wifi

I've been having trouble with with the wifi receiver in my fairly old
Acer laptop**, but, showing good foresight, years before I had any
trouble, I bought a USB Wireless LAN card***

The LAN card is made in China by a company I've never heard of but its
entry in Device Manage says Realtek.  Is it really Realtek?  I see that
name a lot but now I"m not sure it's for real. 


**For a couple years, the wireless would stop working after a couple
weeks, so I'd connect a cable, then a couple weeks later, that would
stop working so I'd disconnect it and use wifi.  And on in on.
  But in recent months, I used only the cable. Getting ready for a trip
to see my brother, I unplugged it and the wifi wouldn't connect.  I ran
the troubleshooter and it said it couldn't find the problem, but it
would Reset and restart windows and that might help, and restarting is a
nuisance but each time it did all of that, I worked.  Five or 6 times
until I had sleep or hibernate. Then I had to start over with the
troubleshooter.  Any idea of how to fix this?. 

***which may or may not be what's currently connecting versus the
built-in lan card.