Recommended WIFI USB plug?

I need to get a desktop PC onto WiFi (using tethering from my phone - for some reason USB tethering doesn't work on this phone, it did on my old one, but WiFi tethering does work). So I got a very cheap (about £5 on ebay) tiny USB WiFi receiver. It's hardly any bigger than the USB plug. However it didn't work plug and play, it turned out to have a Ralink MT7601U chipset which isn't natively supported so I followed these instructions to try to set it up https://askubuntu.com/questions/4570...llation#554278
Got to the last line of the instructions and when I entered that the computer froze completely, not even the mouse would work. Had to hard shutdown it, but it wouldn't restart without hanging. When I took the USB WiFi plug out then it would boot up (phew!) but then I tried plugging it in again and it instantly froze completely again.
So can anyone offer any suggestions for (a) making this work or (b) recommend a similar one that's natively supported and doesn't need me to install any drivers?
Thank you.