Surface Pro 3 Slow WiFi - 72Mbps Max (driver)

Even worse - I thought Zack was part of the Surface team. Is it just me or does this whole conversation thread seem kind of ridiculous? We've got customers complaining and guessing and trying to find workarounds. You are suggesting I contact an MVP and that we try to "hunt some help down." And yet no one from the Microsoft Surface team is willing to communicate here open and honestly and say "Hey folks, we are aware of these problems. This is what we know... And here are some temporary workarounds... Here is what we are doing... If you are having connectivity issues, please submit your computer configuration here..." Why do we need to hunt anyone down? My guess is that Microsoft has a potential recall-situation here and is afraid to own up to the problem.

Yeah, you have to figure all this is stemming from the adapter itself and that based on how many updates they've deployed to attempt to fix these issues, it may not even be possible to fix with a driver update. Is it worth the effort to bring my SP3 and complain so much that I get a replacement.....  a replacement that may have the exact same issue.

So many people report no wifi issues at all with their SP3, and yet so many people report these persistent issues. It's a crapshoot if you'll get one that works, apparently.

Sigh. This is so frustrating. I've had my SP3 (256GB / i7) for about two months now and none of the updates MS has pushed through have helped the wifi issue.

People here are complaining about getting 40 - 50 MB/s throughput, yet when I transfer files to my SP3 from my desktop (on the same network, over 5 GHz wifi), I'm lucky if I see 4 - 5 MB/s transfer speeds.

I've got a TP-LINK TL-WDR3600 Dual Band router that has separate SSIDs for 2.4 and 5 GHz. I'm using only the 5 GHz band for the SP3, and the router is set to N-only for the 5 GHz.

My SP3 consistently:

• Won't reconnect to wifi after being asleep (wifi shows up as "Limited" with no internet connection). I have to either disconnect from the wifi network and reconnect, or since that doesn't always work either (!!), restart the machine.
• Transfer & throughput speeds are terrible.
• AND wifi drops! Will be fine for X amount of time, while in use, and then randomly drop to Limited / no internet connection. Not anything related to coming out of sleep, during actual use. Will have to restart or disconnect from wifi then reconnect.

All of this while: fully up to date on all updates and drivers and connected to a 5 GHz N-only dual band router (that is not sharing an SSID with 2.4 GHz).

What prompted me to post here today was that last night my SP3 completely stopped connecting to ANY 5 GHz signal. I restarted. I toggled the wifi. As many out there have suggested: I enabled Hyper-V, restarted, adjusted the wireless adapter power settings, disabled Hyper-V, restarted... and it still wouldn't connect to the 5 GHz wifi. It would only connect to the 2.4 GHz SSID. And the speeds were obviously atrocious compared to even the not great 5 GHz speed. Out of desperation I started playing with the router settings and changed the 5 GHz band from "11an mixed" to "11n only" and finally that allowed me to reconnect to the 5 GHz band with the SP3. Ugh!

Incredible that this hasn't been fixed since the release of the SP3. My wife's Macbook Air that is a year and a half old has zero issues on our 5 GHz wifi. My WP (a Lumia 920, two years old, which I love) has zero issues on our 5 GHz wifi.... yet a brand new SP3, which wasn't cheap, is terrible on wifi!

What is causing this? The Marvell adapter drivers? Why hasn't this been fixed!

I posted a couple of times that my solution until Microsoft figures this out, is to get a nano USB WiFi adapter.  I bought one after I had the WiFi issues and never looked back. 

For a while before the 10/28 update I was able to use the SP3's internal adapter but MS messed it up again on 10/28 so I gave up and went back to my trusted $9 nano adapter and it is rock solid.  Makes me wonder how come a small company can get something correct and a large corporation can't get this right after so many months now. 

I love the SP3 so I hope MS solves the WiFi and heat issues, but until then using a WiFi adapter will allow you to use the device and enjoy it. Just make sure to disable the internal WiFi after you are done installing the drivers of the new one.

Out of curiosity can you guys check your event log and see if you have any critical errors pertaining to a bunch of services stopping or failing to start again.  Especially the Device Setup Manager.  Let me know if you see anything there.

Even worse - I thought Zack was part of the Surface team. Is it just me or does this whole conversation thread seem kind of ridiculous? We've got customers complaining and guessing and trying to find workarounds. You are suggesting I contact an MVP and that we try to "hunt some help down." And yet no one from the Microsoft Surface team is willing to communicate here open and honestly and say "Hey folks, we are aware of these problems. This is what we know... And here are some temporary workarounds... Here is what we are doing... If you are having connectivity issues, please submit your computer configuration here..." Why do we need to hunt anyone down? My guess is that Microsoft has a potential recall-situation here and is afraid to own up to the problem.

No one from Surface Engineering is posting in this forum. Zack is part of the "Service Delivery" group for Surface. I can see that they are fixing things for Windows 10, but there has been nonofficial statement if some fixes won't be done until 10 launches. They've done some work on Win 10 to make Hyper-v and Connected Standby compatible, for example. But I agree that the lack of real and honest detailed communication is ridiculous.

I'm personally telling people I know who ask not to buy a SP3 unless they also spend extra  money for an add-on USB wifi adapter since the wifi is so undependable. Susan was in Redmond and was looking to hunt down info from the Surface team.

An external USB adapter is the only suggestion I can make as a work around. I know people should not have to change router settings, etc. And I am not holding my breath for fixes and information.

I posted a couple of times that my solution until Microsoft figures this out, is to get a nano USB WiFi adapter.  I bought one after I had the WiFi issues and never looked back. 

For a while before the 10/28 update I was able to use the SP3's internal adapter but MS messed it up again on 10/28 so I gave up and went back to my trusted $9 nano adapter and it is rock solid.  Makes me wonder how come a small company can get something correct and a large corporation can't get this right after so many months now. 

I love the SP3 so I hope MS solves the WiFi and heat issues, but until then using a WiFi adapter will allow you to use the device and enjoy it. Just make sure to disable the internal WiFi after you are done installing the drivers of the new one.

Yeah, I'm seriously considering it. Just seems ridiculous that it even has to be considered.