Sometimes I do a cleanup right-away and sometimes a few days later depending on an unscientific feeling or online problem reporting.
Treat every system different.
How do you figure? MACRORIT says it's for SSD's but no mention of NVMe. https://macrorit.com/disk-surface-test/disk-surface-test.html
I would not trust the test, it appears to be more aimed at mechanical drives. Seems like an odd source for reading NVMe drives.
Can you post a screenshot using CrystalDiskInfo running 8.9.0a: https://crystalmark.info/en/download/ (Vista installer)
Under "Function" you can Hide Serial Number (always a good thing)
EDIT: also under Function>Advance Feature>Raw Values> (set: 10 [DEC] )
We're all assuming that his 2012 laptop doesn't have a Whitelist excluding other cards. But assuming he got by any bios configuration on boot-up, then it could be just a matter of drivers and clearing out the old.
Another leap forward in adapters might cause more issues??? He also didn't...
You loaded these???: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28621/Intel-PROSet-Wireless-Software-and-Drivers-for-Intel-Wireless-7260-Family
And you uninstalled the old drivers???
And you did this from a CMD prompt as Administrator: netsh int ip reset
Reboot
Then you re-added your ssid and...