This post is for Chris and anyone else who tends to get involved troubleshooting Windows PCs. My **guess** is that Windows is getting pickier about drivers, &/or Microsoft is using AI to monitor individual systems regarding risk. At any rate, my experience *might* be worth adding to your memory banks.
Asus released new Bluetooth & WiFi drivers for the motherboard in this PC, so I downloaded, installed, and then checked Device Mgr. to make sure it worked. That's when I found the WiFi chip was missing. Showing hidden devices, properties for that chip shows it was disconnected. Booting into the Insider copy of Win11, WiFi was working fine, including after installing the new driver. Uninstalling the WiFi chip & driver in Device Mgr. & restarting Windows had no effect -- turning off WiFi in the BIOS, starting Win11, turning it back on in the BIOS, & starting Win11 also made no difference. Logs didn't show anything. Checking the deactivated chip's properties in Device Mgr., Events showed that by now Windows had tried and failed setting up networking for the chip 5 times. Tried the semi-nuclear option of reinstalling Windows, using the 25H2 ISO, which had no effect -- logs say it couldn't migrate the chip/driver. Went back to the Asus site and downloaded the roughly 1 year old initial WiFi driver for the board, which is the only one that advertised WHQL. Installed it and the WiFi chip immediately started working.
BitDefender logs don't show anything related, so I don't believe it was the AV software blocking the driver, and I couldn't find anything using Event Viewer or in the Defender logs. [This is a sanitized copy edited to remove muttered curses etc.]