I don't know if it will work, but...
if it's a usb device, unplug it; wait a few seconds, then plug it in again. DONT run airodump; just go straight to networkmanager. See if it works. (But this will not work if you have blacklisted the driver it needs. You need to decide which method to troubleshoot first; either do this or do the blacklisting and follow that up.
OK, sorry, I se it's a pci device. You'll need toThere may also be modules which depend on rtl8821ae. you will need to rmmod them too to get it to uninstall. Then reinsert (insmod or modprobe them all.)Code:rmmod rtl8821ae insmod rtl8821ae