Marvell AVASTAR 350N

Anonymous
2016-09-17T17:36:52+00:00

Greetings.

I've had this issue pretty much since day 1 but have lived with it ... figured I'd ask around to see if anyone has determined a resolution.

The crappy Wi-Fi adapter disappears from Device Manager every other "restart".  

If I shutdown completely there is no issue - only when performing a restart.

There have been a few posts circulating on the Internet about this issue, but I don't think anyone has officially resolved.

I have "clean" installed Windows 8 and recently Windows 10 which didn't resolve the issue.

Like I said, the crappy Wi-Fi adapter disappears from Device Manager every other "restart" resulting in no network connectivity whatsoever.  I have to restart in order for the crappy wifi adapter to return to Device Manager.

One of the most bizarre and frustrating hardware issues I've ever lived with...

I have no idea why Microsoft selected Marvell and their crappy Wi-Fi adapter instead of Intel !!!  Argh.

Surface | Surface Pro | Network

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-09-27T05:15:33+00:00

    Yes I have done all these things.

    I have "clean" installed both Windows 8.1 and 10.  Then proceeded to manually install the latest Wi-Fi driver.  Same result.  Does not resolve the issue.

    I've also tried uninstalling from Device Manager and reboot/restart with no success.

    I can't begin to imagine what is the cause of this issue.  It's most bizarre.

    Hi,

    Since the troubleshooting steps didn’t work, we recommend you to send your Surface Pro 2 for service for a thorough check. Here's how.

    Regards.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-09-18T09:10:30+00:00

    Hello,

    We're here to help. Let us investigate this for you. When did you first encounter the problem? Were you able to able to update the wireless network adapter before it disappears on the Device Manager? Make sure that the device has the latest updates installed. How about installing the driver only? Was there any difference?

    If you haven't downloaded the latest update for the wireless network driver, you can manually download it here.

    Since you mentioned that it disappears every other restart, if there's a certain point that it appears, we suggest that you uninstall (do not delete) the driver then restart the device. After you restarted the device, your Surface should automatically install the network adapter.

    Keep us posted.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-09-24T12:47:39+00:00

    Yes I have done all these things.

    I have "clean" installed both Windows 8.1 and 10.  Then proceeded to manually install the latest Wi-Fi driver.  Same result.  Does not resolve the issue.

    I've also tried uninstalling from Device Manager and reboot/restart with no success.

    I can't begin to imagine what is the cause of this issue.  It's most bizarre.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-03-11T20:13:48+00:00

    I can't hook up to my sprint broadband card, only occasionally, everything else will with no problem. It will hookup to other hotspots with no problem. If it does connect sometimes it will drop. When letting it search for the issues, it always says that the default gateway isn't connected and does a wifi reset connecting this 50/50 shot whether it works. I had the first problem under warranty I talked with tech dept. they had me input some codes and it worked for 3mos, til I was out of warranty. Wish I had wrote them down. I've only used this about 8 mos. of it entire life. what a waste of $1400 mine has a 256 gb ssd. I been told to replace the 350N wifi but  nearly impossible to open these cases  ANYBODY have a solution, it's a great little combo when it worked, would like to get it fixed. thanks for any info.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-03-11T21:49:45+00:00

    I can't hook up to my sprint broadband card

    What about using a USB-Ethernet connection?  In fact, supposedly there is also the possibility of USB-Wi-Fi.  Or what other devices do you have?  Perhaps you could use Bluetooth PAN to one of those for ICS?  Etc.

    BTW one detail that keeps getting ignored when we are told to make sure we have the "latest updates" is that when it comes to firmware updates nobody tells us how to know if they worked.  E.g. it's obvious that some registry values get changed but is there a way to actually query the firmware to ask it if it agrees that it has been updated?

    Otherwise for a guess we can look at the BIOS information shown by msinfo32 and wmic BIOS.  In my case they both agree and the latter says its SoftwareElementState=3.  WTH does that mean?

    SoftwareElementState

    - 3 Local

    How very reassuring!

    And somehow  wmic BIOS can also inform me that  Status=OK.

    So there would be a bit more information than what msinfo32 shows (but not much) from either wmic

    PS>wmic BIOS list /format:list | select-string "BIOS|STAT"

    BiosCharacteristics={7,11,12,15,16,17,19,23,24,25,26,28,29,32,33,40,42,43}

    PrimaryBIOS=TRUE

    SMBIOSBIOSVersion=2.05.0250

    SMBIOSMajorVersion=2

    SMBIOSMinorVersion=7

    SMBIOSPresent=TRUE

    SoftwareElementState=3

    Status=OK

    or this equivalent PowerShell cmdlet (where I had to know first what I was trying to find, unlike the above)

    PS>Get-CIMInstance CIM_SoftwareElement | where CIMClass -match "BIOS" | fl * | out-string -stream | select-string -Pattern "BIOS|Stat"

    also that one truncates the list of BiosCharacteristics for whatever that is worth.

    FYI

    Robert Aldwinckle


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