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?

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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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
    2015-10-17T18:54:56+00:00

    Well, I got sick of my wifi issues on the Surface Pro 3 and decided to blow it away completely and do a Windows 10 "reset." This ostensibly erases everything and is the most extreme action you can take to try to resolve a problem.

    Upon resetting, something interesting happened.  Windows installed the 9/15 update but would not install the 9/29 update that had the wifi stuff in it, even after repeated manual update attempts and restarts.  My system shows fully updated and the 9/29 update is not installed.  Also, my wireless adapter is on the 15.68.3091.193 driver from 6/4/2015 instead of the most recent driver.  I also tried "update driver" from the driver tab of the wireless adapter.  The wireless connectivity is back to being stable but extremely slow on 5GHz.

    My conclusion is that someone at Microsoft pulled the plug on the 9/29 update after receiving a flood of complaints.

    Meanwhile, I called MS support and asked them to replace my surface for these problems.  They wanted me first to go through a list of troubleshooting stuff that I had mostly already done.  They told me they'd call back to see how it went.  Well, to appease them and prove to myself that MS can't fix this, I did the troubleshooting.  It didn't fix it and so I decided to do the reset I described above.  MS still hasn't called back.  This is the third time MS has left my support ticket hanging. I assume it's because they know they can't fix an issue and it's better to let the customer hang and have a chance of not costing them warranty than it is to call back and invoke warranty costs.

    I have $910 in Best Buy gift certificates burning a hole in my wallet and I wanted to upgrade to the surface book, but with all the different problems I've had with my three Surface Pro products, $1500 is way too much money to put on the line when MS can't even keep basic connectivity of the SP3 working.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-10-16T19:06:19+00:00

    I had this problem with my surface pro 3 bought last week and downloads were excruciatingly slow. Took it back and was replaced - problem even worse, spent 4 hours with MS online chat, no fix.

    Eventually tried this, worked a treat:

    Control Panel> System> Device Manager> Network Adaptors> Marvell AVASTAR Wireless-AC Network Controller

    Right click and select Properties

    Select Advanced Tab

    Band properties was set to "Auto"

    Changed to 2.4 GHz Only

    Click OK

    Everything then connected, no more problems after that.

    I'm UK based, using BT Homehub router

    Changing to 2.4GHz only basically cripples connectivity when 5GHz networks are available. What you should try to do is go to a friend/neighbor/etc. home where they have a different router and see if you have the same issue.

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