I still suspect the problem is a driver issue with the laptop adapter. Other things work as I recall so that is the one thing that stands out. The driver OR the adapter capability. Drivers are a pain.

I did a pc reset after trying a restore and it worked.

I realize I had network drives mounted via old network which may have been the problem? 

That probably was related to the behavior. Interesting but it sort of makes some sense. The OS was probably just doing what it does to try to maintain the drive mounts. 

The t-mobile router doesn't work with some Dell computers.  T-mobile Philippines support was clueless.  So was Dell support.  I solved the problem by connecting via a wifi extender.