How can I completely wipeout and reinstall networking libs and configs?
My wifi networking has become very unstable on my computer (Dell Precision 3510, Ubuntu 16.04, 4.9 kernel) after about 18 months of use where there were no problems at all. I've spent quite some time trying to figure out where the problem lies but nothing seems to work. I've eliminated hardware as a possible problem, it is only software. I'm not really interested in suggestions about configuring routes or interfaces files. These all work fine once the connection is made. The problem is making the connection, and it only happens for my computer, no one else suffers from this problem.
I suspect it has something to do with either an incomplete update to ubuntu, or that one time someone from IT logged into my computer to try and figure out some routing issue when connected to the VPN. This happened right around the same time that the problems began, and I suspect he may have installed/updated something or made some config change that is non-obvious. Getting help from them is pretty much useless so I'm not interested in letting them on to my computer again.
I guess I'm in desperation mode now because I'm about ready to just throw it all away and do a complete re-install of Ubuntu. I'm hoping someone can help me avoid that by somehow forcing the network to be completely re-installed and re-configured. Is there a way to do this?
Re: How can I completely wipeout and reinstall networking libs and configs?
Does your networking improve if you boot from a LiveUSB?
You write that you have done a lot of troubleshooting, to no avail. What have you tried?
Do you know which parts of the networking stack you want to reinstall?