Hello, perhaps someone has some valuable input for me concerning this issue. I'm trying to get a D-Link RTL8188S WLAN usb adapter working on my dell desktop computer. My current installed system is Debian 7.6.0 LXDE.

The device previously worked on a live system based on Debian 6 with the firware-realtek package version 0.42. After installing Debian 7 and installing an older version of the firmware and rebooting I noticed that not only did it not work but after doing so the CPU ran abnormally high and the network manager application would not load.

I have tried installing a more recent version of the same firmware from packages.debian.org the most recent version of the firmware that I could find there was version 0.41 and installing it yielded the same results.

Does anyone have any ideas?

I'm also using a realtek dongle for my desktop, RTL8191SU 802.11n WLAN Adapter. I use the r8712u driver supplied by the firmware-realtek ver. 0.43 package. It works fine for my adapter. If you're running Debian stable then the "official version" is 0.36 and running stable while using version 0.41 might cause a problem. I suppose you could try Jessie's 0.43 and see if that helps. Alternatively, is there any special reason for running Debian Stable? I you're using Stable for a home computer then Debian Testing might be more appropriate and might solve your problem as well.
jdk

Thanks for your input jdkaye,
I tried jessie's version of the firmware and got the same result. Not sure whats going on. My decision to use Debian on my desktop was solely because I'm familiar with it and I knew there was firmware in the repos that should work with the adapter I'm trying to use.

When you do a lshw what is the driver that comes up for your wifi adapter? As I said, mine is r8712u. What is yours?
jdk

Mine is the same r8712u. Here's the terminal output if it's useful:

05: USB 00.0: 0000 Unclassified device
[Created at usb.122]
Unique ID: 2UT6.3GAvyuNuQPA
Parent ID: k4bc.OqydEZZ981A
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.1/usb1/1-3/1-3:1.0
SysFS BusID: 1-3:1.0
Hardware Class: unknown
Model: "D-Link RTL8188S WLAN Adapter"
Hotplug: USB
Vendor: usb 0x07b8 "D-Link"
Device: usb 0x8188 "RTL8188S WLAN Adapter"
Revision: "2.00"
Serial ID: "00e04c000001"
Driver: "r8712u"
Driver Modules: "r8712u"
Speed: 480 Mbps
Module Alias: "usb:v07B8p8188d0200dc00dsc00dp00icFFiscFFipFF"
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: rtl8192cu is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe rtl8192cu"
Driver Info #1:
Driver Status: r8712u is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe r8712u"
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #3 (Hub)