Wifi problems on SP2?

[jovopham]

I bought 2 128gb Surface Pro 2's yesterday for my wife and I. We could be perfectly happy them except that the WIFI is not reliable. Our old laptops connect fine where we are, but it took forever to connect on the new SP2's. My wife's finally started working okay, but mine only seems to be connected to the net when in sleep mode (background download). When I start using it, the internet stops. If I am really close to the router I am okay, but since we bought the SP2's because we are on the road a lot we will not always have perfect internet. We did all the windows updates and all the trouble shooting we could think of. Anyone else having problems? Thinking of taking them back to Best Buy and just keeping our old laptops a little longer. Maybe SP3 will be perfect!

 

[deldalton]

No problems to report with my SP2 64GB. But, I've only used it for a few hours in the same spot. I'd really like to post a review of my experience soon. I'll be sure to cover this.

But, I can't complete an accurate review until I've used it in multiple scenarios and locations.

 

[jovopham]

At Deldalton, you sound like you know what you are doing.......your study/report would help a lot more users than myself!

 

[mitchellvii]

Are you using a bluetooth mouse? Some models can cause wifi issues.

Try resetting your router to default settings and tweak it from there. Also the possibility you could just have a defective SP2. Happens.

 

[deldalton]

At Deldalton, you sound like you know what you are doing.......your study/report would help a lot more users than myself!

I'm just a curious fan ...

But, I'll post something soon. I suspect there will be a lot of other reviews popping up in the next few days so keep an eye out for them as well.

In the meantime, there are a lot of knowledgeable and helpful users on this forum so I'm sure they'll give you some feedback shortly too.

 

[Deleted member 10837]

I'm sure your router have settings similar to these that you can adjust before returning it.

 

[apoc_reg]

SP2 256gb connected to my Wifi at work keeps losing connection, the wifi sign will still say connected but I cant get internet.

I have to turn wifi off and on again and that fixes it... for a while. I had the same issue on my Surface Pro 1 when I installed Windows 8.1 preview so maybe its a 8.1 issue as much as anything!?

 

[mitchellvii]

Seems as if Microsoft fubared everyone's SP2 wifi adapters with their latest Hardware Update. Just roll your wifi adapter back to the prior driver version and you should be fine until MS sorts things out.

 

[jovopham]

Thanks Mitchellvii, how do I roll back to the previous driver version? I am on the road from hotel to hotel, before we go back to Colombia in Jan 2014.....so I can't really check if the router is the problem......

 

[mitchellvii]

Here's the latest wifi drivers for 8.1 from Marvell themselves. On my Surface Pro these work very well:

Download Marvell AVASTAR 350N Wireless Network Controller Driver 14.69.24040.136 for Windows 8 64 bit

If you run into a problem with being able to install these, just delete the Marvell Adapter, right click the Network Adapters heading and select "Add Hardware". This will re-add the adapter then add the new driver as described below.

It's a .cab file so you just need to unpack it (extract) then open your Network Adapter in Device Manager, right click it to update drivers then select the place where you put the unpacked cab on our hard drive. Checkmark the "include subfolders" box and it will automatically find the correct driver.

To roll back to a previous driver:

Control Panel > Device Manager > Network Adapters > Marvell (right click) > Properties > Drivers > Rollback Driver.

** Of course proceed at your own risk, if you brick your shiny new thing it's on you

 

[CrownSeven]

Me and the wife both picked up a SPRO2 256 and are having zero issues with WIFI. Have all the latest drivers as well from windows update.

There's a LOT of things that come into play when it comes to WIFI, and more often than not poor performance is due to how a wifi router is configured.