Surface Pro 3 keeps nuking its Wifi drivers

Iruka

After my computer wakes up, it totally forgets it has wifi capability and just throws its drivers out. googling it seems to give me results for windows 8.1, I'm on 10 and the problem isn't exactly the same, it seems. The "Marvell AVASTAR Wireless-AC Network Controller” does not appear in the device manager when it happens, does not reappear when power cycle, and automatically looking for it does not seem to work.

I had to go and download the latest firmware release (SurfacePro3_Win10_1700802_1) and put it on a flash drive. Once I installed that, it worked... until it fell asleep again. The only way to fix it currently is to uninstall and reinstall that particular update.

Some instructions say to modify power settings for the ethernet connection, but I cant seem to find such settings anywhere. Any ideas?

Tofystedeth

Man that is weird. Maybe they're talking about the Wake on LAN setting in the BIOS?

bowen

I guess my solution right now would be to disable sleep/hibernate and just do straight up power off and power on instead and see if that helps.

Iruka

Like, permanently? I mean it would, but I'd rather have my device have the capability to go to sleep.

If you mean once, power cycling after the driver was successfully installed again did not stop it from then tanking the driver when it next went to sleep.

I'll root around in BIOS.

bowen

yeah permanently, I can't find much either

Darkewolfe

See if this gives you any help:

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/wifi-gets-disconnected-after-sleep

Iruka

unfortunately, I cant seem to replicate the steps:

My wifi driver doesn't have power management options, as far as I can tell, and I'm not seeing a setting like it in the other power management area.

Darkewolfe

Try it from the powershell instead. For some reason they've hidden a bunch of the stuff from the GUI in several versions.

Unless that's what you're saying about "other power management area."

You could also check the registry settings, should be under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{UUID}\DeviceNumber (fill in ID numbers with correct ones obviously).

Iruka

Ah, no I missed the powershell instructions. I'll check that out after dinner!

mts

The sleep hibernation stuff is in the battery options I think

spool32

I support these A LOT in my organization. You should look at turning off Fast Boot in the power options, and then you should also know that I've seen about a dozen SP3s in the last 3 months have wifi failures where no driver would stick no matter what we did. Replacing them is expensive ($450) but our only option besides taking them out of service....

I currently have a guy in Phoenix dead in the water from this exact problem.

Shadowfire

What spool said. Disable Fast Boot and see if it helps, but the SP3's wifi has been problematic.

Iruka

Well, inexplicably it seems to have righted itself, but I'm not sure which thing did it. This also happend once a few weeks ago, and after a few times loading its drivers seem to correct itself, only to happen again last night. So who knows, maybe its not fixed.

Either way thanks for the help. I shouldnt be surprised that windows cant even handle not fucking eating its own goddamn drivers, but I've been a windows user for so damn long.

spool32

Your semi-perma solution should be a Belkin USB to WiFi adapter. It's not worth screwing around with this over and over when you can solve the problem for $20 on amazon.

Iruka

My perma-perma solution is chucking this thing out a fuckin window.

If this round of sleuthing doesn't stick, I'll stick a dongle out of my 1200 device that has built in wifi, but I won't like it.

Tube

Is it under warranty?

Iruka

It is no longer under warranty, I'm afraid, I think I only got a 1 year.

downer

Iruka, have you tried the following?

In the search box on the taskbar, type Command prompt, press and hold (or right-click) Command prompt, and then select Run as administrator > Yes.
At the command prompt, run the following commands in the listed order, and then check to see if that fixes your connection problem:

• Type netsh winsock reset and press Enter.
• Type netsh int ip reset and press Enter.
• Type ipconfig /release and press Enter.
• Type ipconfig /renew and press Enter.
• Type ipconfig /flushdns and press Enter.

If you're still having trouble, feel free to PM me.

Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft.

spool32

Iruka wrote: »

It is no longer under warranty, I'm afraid, I think I only got a 1 year.

Yeah if you didn't get the Complete longterm wrranty thing, it's $450 to get it replaced.

Iruka

It just happened again.

I thought I'd update this thread saying that @downer That solution did not work, once I got to the ipconfig inputs it simply had nothing to apply them to, I cant remember the exact error, something like "device not found" though.

The powershell instructions above had the same issue. The Marvell driver is completely gone when this happens.

I was able to reinstall the driver itself. Upon reset it seems to do nothing, and then when I walk away for 5-10 minutes, it comes back. So either an accumulation of all these actions is doing it, or the loss of drivers is temporary and is based on some arbitrary process I cant see.

I'll note that, this time it was not lost when I put it to sleep, I was literally in the middle of a bunch of fucking goddamn shit and it tanked in front of my eyes. I, to my knowledge, was not doing anything offensive to the surface.

spool32

Identical problems abound in my network. Bail on your internal wifi, broheim. It will never be reliable again.

Evil Multifarious

I have had this problem and I think it's a hardware issue. The adapter seems to have failed entirely and now I have a dongle sticking out of it most of the time I'm using it, which is deeply irritating.

To use it with a usb KBM at the same time, I have to use a cheap USB hub adapter, and it's like a horrible little stegosaurus tail at that point.

I'm entirely unsurprised that this is a common issue.