What have you tried: reinstalling driver through different methods. Not sure what caused the driver (if that is the issue to stop working. Last significant update was yesterday but it worked after that
What is the error: no error just isn’t recognized
What device is this on: kali Linux on VMware workstation. Vmmare sees the device. Dmesg see the device in Kali. Not familiar on troubleshooting drivers. Novice Linux user
Other info:
lsusb sees the device
Dmesg: sees and identified device correctly
Product: 802.11ac
Manufacturer: Realtek
Serial# xxxxxxxxxx
802.11ac is an IEEE standard and does not tell us which product is affected. The relevant information would be the exact chipset used by your wifi adapter.
Realtek is well known for lackluster linux driver support, a lot of the adapters receive their drivers from community projects and those tend to break in a rolling release distro from time to time.
Nothing Kali can do about it. It is also the reason adapters with realtek chipsets never appear on the list of recommended adapters that is usually referenced in this situation.
I will echo @Eris2cats and advise avoiding realtek in future.
For troubleshooting your current issue, the first thing I would do is a full upgrade of kali, so:
sudo apt full-upgrade
Then please paste the output of lsusb
TIA