Surface Pro 3 - Windows 10 - WiFi (slow or limited connectivity )

Anonymous
2015-07-30T14:16:39+00:00

Have a Surface Pro 3 that worked fine till I updated to Win10.  Now the wireless connection seems to randomly go to a "limited connectivity" mode.  Fortunately was purchased from Costco a coupe of weeks ago so it is going back there if we can't get this figured out by Sunday.

The Surface Pro3 is a flagship device - why in the world would you subject your customers to have to resort to looking for help in forums like this?

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Anonymous
2015-11-13T10:20:54+00:00

Everyone,

Build 10586 - the November Windows 10 update - was released yesterday, and it contains a newer Marvell wireless driver 15.68.9032.47 - people are reporting that this greatly improves wireless connectivity. Please download the large update, and if you used the registry hack, reverse it as follows:

Press Windows button. Search for regedit. Open it

  1. Navigate to the following path:

 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\mrvlpcie8897

  1. Find the item labeled “TXAMSDU”. Double tap and modify the value from 0 to 1
  2. Restart the machine

Then test your connectivity, and post results.

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Anonymous
2015-11-13T10:44:26+00:00

Fred,

the November Windows 10 update to build 10586 has new wireless drivers. Can you download and install the update (it should be offered via WU) and let us know if this changes your connectivity?

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Anonymous
2015-08-05T18:12:39+00:00

Penny,

These kinds of issues WERE present on 8.1 for months but they mostly all cleared after several driver updates.

And that particular router is not one known to exhibit slow wifi. I'm suggesting you trade it because it is SP new and you can now get one with 10 pre-installed and not have to go through an upgrade AND because you have this issue. Getting it swapped will rule out a hardware issue and would be a step forward.

This is what *I* would do if in this situation.

For what it's worth - Microsoft needs to fix the driver and any underlying Win 10 OS issues. It took them 9 months to get a "good" Windows 8.1 wireless driver. For now, consider an external USB wireless adapter. I carry around a http://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811UTC-Dual-Band-Connectivity-Exceeding/dp/B00FW6T36Y

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-09-03T15:33:00+00:00

    Yes, the .193 driver is in the firmware update. Some folks have had success (like you) grabbing the older .151 driver (after the firmware thing is installed) from Softpedia and using the browse have disk let me select from device manager. They probably then have to disable device driver updates to make this stick.

    Not everyone is having issues with the .193 driver, though, and that is what makes it tough for them to figure out what is happening.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-09-03T01:16:15+00:00
    • Turning off location services has been reported to help.
    • Uninstalling Marvell Wireless adapter has helped.
    • Customers have reported that disabling Bluetooth has helped.
    • Restarting Surface has a temporary, positive effect.
    • Improvement if connecting only to 2.4Ghz on your router, or select 2.4Ghz only from the band chooser on Surface.

    In my case, turning off location services, uninstalling and reinstalling drivers, disabling Bluetooth, or restarting the Surface did not have an effect on the slowdowns I have been experiencing.

    Performance improves on the 2.4 GHz band, but it is still not near where it should be. For example, from 8 Mbps on 5 GHz to 30 Mbps on 2.4 GHz when the speed should be around 150 Mbps.

    One thing not mentioned in the list is changing the channel width for the 5 GHz band to 20 MHz. This workaround got me up to around 90 Mbps, but left other devices on the network running slower than desired, since most are not 802.11ac.

    The current workaround that I've used for a couple of weeks so far is reverting to the Wi-Fi driver in the January 2015 driver update. I get the speeds I expect and everything is stable. I've had no other major issues and I've been happy with my Surface Pro 3 since then.

    I've seen another similarly configured Surface Pro 3 running Windows 10 Pro work just fine with my router with the same version of the driver that caused me problems, so it is not enough to say it is just a driver issue or an issue with Windows 10. There has to be something more to the problem like a different hardware revision, etc. There are also multiple symptoms that not everyone shares like erratic latency or dropped connections. I've had neither of those problems, just the reduced bandwidth.

    I've mentioned it before, but I have an ASUS RT-AC68U router running the latest non-beta firmware from ASUS. I've already backed up and passed along firmware settings to Barb, who has passed them along to her contact at Microsoft. I would also like to thank Barb for her efforts in helping to get this problem resolved.

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