Windows 8.1: WiFi dropping and/or "Limited"

OK, so you really ticked this option under the "View" menu in Device Manager:

View (menu) choose "Show Hidden Devices"

...and then you actually didn't see the hidden device "Microsoft WiFi Direct Virtual Adapter" (or anyone else) ...???

That's really weird.  I have now 4 different 8.1 devices and all of them have that as a hidden device.  (Dell, Microsoft Surface, Sony Vaio, and Gateway).  I also just checked my Windows 7 machine at home and it has something similar called Microsoft Virtual Wifi Miniport Adapter which is a hidden device that you don't see unless you click "View: Show hidden devices".

TSM

Miniport is an old concept resembling to virtual wifi adapters, I guess, and as such a driver concept that normally is unnecessary for us mere mortals to deal with :-)

Otherwise, I,m really sorry to say that fiddling with the virtual adapter power save settings DIDN'T solve my headache, as I got this "No internet access" after some 16 hours :-(

Now, what I wonder about, is the REAL difference between "Limited access" and "No internet access". Is it introduced some logic, that checks beyond "link up" whether the WiFi connection results in a reachable Internet - which turns on/off some of these flags?

Earlier on, even on XP/Win7, a misconfigured network, resulting in unreachable DNS service, bad IP or a bad route / out from a broadband connection has given me that kind of diagnostic earlier on. I wonder whether there is now introduced in Win8 a semi-intelligent mechanism (not) that actually fails (compared to my other wifi devices, that really operate OK) and decides to mark my wifi connection as useless, the same way as if I had misconfigured it...???

Hi,

Same story here:

• Airport Extreme Time Capsule as a WiFi router.
• Two Mac clients on the WiFi without any connectivity issues.
• Two iPhone clients on the WiFi without any connectivity issues.
• Three different iPads on the WiFi without any connectivity issues.
• A Linux client on the WiFi without any connectivity issues.
• An Android 4 tablet on the WiFi without any connectivity issues.
• A Surface RT with Windows 8.1 and frequent connectivity issues on the WiFi.
• A Dell T420S with Windows 8.1 Pro and frequent connectivity issues on the WiFi.
• A Dell Venue 8 Pro running Windows 8.1 and frequent connectivity issues on the WiFi.
• A Dell X1 Carbon running Windows 8.1 Pro and frequent connectivity issues on the WiFi.

See the pattern here?

Clearly, there's something wrong with Windows 8.1 and how it interacts with the Apple Airport Extreme WiFi router!

My solution: I got a cheap WRT54GL to run DD-WRT and hooked that up via cable to the Airport to act as another WiFi access point just for the Windows clients.

I hope that someone at Microsoft will take some time to drill into what's causing this issue, so either Microsoft or Apple can fix it.

Tobias W.

Couldn't agree more. I have a desktop HP system, and I'm having the same issue. I have to say, I didn't have an issue with it for months after getting the system, but suddenly a couple days ago it started. My Wi-fi connection either goes to  "limited" or disappears altogether. And any attempt to reconnect - short of re-booting - leads nowhere. 

Anything learned since you posted here last November?

Re Install back to factory settings, as it's HP will reset back to Windows 8, don't upgrade to Win 8.1

Had same on my HP Laptop,since I did as suggested No problems.

Gd luck.

Derek