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

Anonymous
2014-06-21T05:48:07+00:00

I have an Apple Airport Extreme 802.11ac wireless router at home and am only connecting at a max of speed of 72Mbps (usually closer to 11Mbps if I'm more than 20 feet away from the WAP). I have two other 802.11ac laptops at home (Samsung AB9+ and rMBP) and my two other computers are connecting up at 800Mbps+ and pulling down the same on Internet speed tests; yes, I have real GigE connectivity. Is anyone else having these problems?

Surface | Surface Pro | Network

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-08-01T15:16:36+00:00

    It's pretty sad you had to pay out of pocket to resolve a MS issue.  With new hardware, early adopters are always beta testers.

    I still have problems with my Linksys EA4500 router and resort to disconnecting and reconnecting.  Wifi is slow at times too.  With my SP2,  it's fast.  The difference is very noticeable..  I'm "living" with it... unfortunately.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-08-01T12:16:53+00:00

    Well, I have given up 100% on Microsoft to solve this problem and I was out of the time to return the SP3 so I did what others have done, bought a miniature Tp-Link wireless nano USB adapter ($9) and it has been smooth sailing since then.  A few drawbacks:

    • It is only 150Mbps max, I only use the SP3 with the internet so it is more than enough for me.  I just need it to be 100% reliable with Wi-Fi.
    • You have a little thing on your USB, does not bother me since it is very small.
    • The biggest drawback is that battery life suffers, even when I put the adapter in saving mode, it does eat up the battery, I can only get 5 hours of battery life on the device vs. about 7 with the built in adapter.  

    These are not major drawbacks for me so I am happy with the way it has worked so far, I can't believe a $9 part can solve this and Microsoft is unable to solve it, crazy.  The one thing you have to do before installing it:

    • Put the driver somewhere the C: drive before starting to install it
    • then disable the Wi-Fi, go to charms bar and turn off only Wi-Fi, then plug in the USB adapter and install the driver with the setup.exe.  It will be Wi-Fi-2 then.  
    • When asked, select to use their software to manage the wireless adapter, do not use Microsoft's Wi-Fi manager since it is buggy.

    Then smooth sailing from there, so far I have not even had to reboot in many days and have not lost Wi-Fi connection anywhere I have gone, no matter what router I have used. 

    Too bad Microsoft can't fix their internal Wi-Fi card to do this! It is crazy that we have to buy extra hardware to solve this problem.

    Maybe someday eventually this will be fixed and I can stop using the USB Wi-Fi adapter, but for now, I don't have to worry about it anymore and I do get to use the SP3.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-08-01T06:23:18+00:00

    I followed the steps in this article. Worked for about 24-48 hours before the bottleneck of 72mbps reared its ugly head again... 

    Maybe if they didn't let go of large portion of their QA org, they'd have a fix tested and deployed. This is extremely frustrating... :-(

    About to take my device back to Best Buy at this rate...

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-07-27T16:11:22+00:00

    I am also facing the same problem. I got only 3mbps when it was on mixed mode. Now I am getting 10-15mbps after changed into G mode. I tried N and got only 3mbps download.

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  5. Anonymous
    2014-07-27T01:15:52+00:00

    Downgrading the driver to 24/4/2014 version solved all my WiFi problems! Thank you!

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