Surface Go takes down entire home network when connecting to wifi

Question

I have a Surface Go Business edition running Windows 10 Pro v1909.   About 90% of the time when I connect it to my home wifi, my entire home wifi goes down and stops working on all devices (tablets, phones, laptops, firesticks, surface go, etc).  The only way to fix it is to reboot my wireless router and my cable modem.  About 10% of the time it will work just fine and never take down my network.  One odd thing is even when it does take down my home network, it will work fine for sometimes 2 minutes, 5 minutes, etc, and then the network just goes down.   I've updated windows fully to the latest version, updated wireless drivers, updated my wireless routers firmware, etc and nothing fixes it.  Any ideas?  My home router is a TP-Link AC1750 Archer C7 wireless router and the wireless adapter on my Surface go is a Qualcomm Atheros QCA61x4A

Answer 1

Hi BillC217,

Thank you for reaching out Microsoft Community. We're sorry to know that your home network acts this way when your Surface device is connected.

Have you tried uninstalling/reinstalling the Wi-Fi driver of your Surface Go?  When did this happen by the way? Have you done resetting the network on  your Surface device? If not kindly follow the steps below to initially troubleshoot this device.

Go to Settings > Network and Internet> Look for Network Reset and complete it. Once your Surface device restarted, open Device Manager > expand Network Adapter > Right-click on the network driver available and select "Properties". Go to Driver and check if rollback driver is not grayed out and if it is not grayed out, kindly rollback the driver and check if this makes any changes after connecting your Surface device to the network again. If it's grayed out, that means that the driver is not the culprit of this issue because there were no recent driver updates specific to Wi-Fi connectivity.  So, what I'd like you to do instead is to select uninstall device, leave the box unchecked, just proceed uninstalling the driver and restart your Surface. Once device restarted, go to https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4023482/surface-download-drivers-and-firmware and choose the first msi file, hit Next,run and install and check if this is still going to be take down the entire home network when device is connected to Wi-Fi.

If this helps, feel free to mark this post as an answer. Otherwise, don't hesitate to respond to this thread for further assistance.

Kind Regards,

Crest_Z

Answer 2

Yes, I've done all of these, several times and it still happens.  Its happened since the day I got the surface go.  Looking at the Microsoft forums, there are 70-80 people with the exact same issue with this wireless network card, but Microsoft refuses to admit there is an issue with this particular network card.  Unfortunately my surface go is out of warranty so I doubt they will do anything about it.  Complete waste of money and I do not plan on buying another surface in the future.

Answer 3

Hi BillC217,

Sorry for the delayed response. 

Have you tried resetting the device back to factory settings, too? To be honest, it's actually just the first time I heard of this that a Surface device took over the network connection and affects other devices' network connectivity. if you do, then the best resolution to get this taken cared of is to have it replaced but if you haven't reimaged the Surface device, see thorough instructions below for details. 

- HOW TO DOWNLOAD, CREATE AND USE A USB RECOVERY DRIVE -

To download the Recovery Image:

You'll need a PC running Windows 7 or later or a Surface Device and a USB-C flashdrive (16GB or 32 GB).

1. Visit the page to Download the recovery image for your Surface
2. Sign in with your Microsoft Account
3. From the list of Surface devices available, select the device that you need a recovery image for

Please note that while you will only be presented with devices that are currently registered on your account, you will also be presented with the option to get an image for a different type of device. If you try to use this option, you will be prompted to enter the serial number for your Surface device. 4. Download the recovery image using the button on the page 5. When the download bar pops up at the bottom of your screen, save the file in a location you will be able to find it.

Format USB Drive:

• Note: Formatting a recovery drive will erase anything that is already stored on your USB drive. Make sure to transfer any important data from your USB drive to another storage device before using it to create a Surface

USB recovery drive.

1. Insert your USB drive into the USB port of your PC.
2. From the desktop, open File Explorer
3. Tap and hold or right-click on the USB drive and choose Format
4. Select FAT32 as the file system and enter a Volume label to name the USB drive, such as RECOVERY, and then tap or click Start
5. Tap or click OK to erase the contents of the USB drive
6. Tap or click OK when the format is complete

Create a recovery drive:

1. On your Surface or PC, open recovery image that you downloaded by double-clicking it or right click then select Extract and then Extract all.
2. Select the USB drive you formatted earlier for the location and click Extract.

Use a USB recovery drive to reset your Surface:

1. Shutdown the Surface
2. Insert the USB recovery drive into the USB port
3. Press and hold the volume-down (-) rocker
4. Press and release the power button
5. When the Surface logo appears, release the volume-down (-) rocker
6. Surface will start the recovery software on the USB recovery drive
7. When prompted, choose your language options and keyboard layout
8. Select Troubleshoot
9. Select Recover from a Drive. Choose Remove Everything and Fully Clean the Drive. Recovering this PC.
10. If prompted, select Repartition the drives
11. If prompted for BitLocker Key, tap Skip this Drive and continue with the reimaging process.

If this helps, feel free to mark this post as an answer. Otherwise, don't hesitate to respond to this thread if you still need assistance. I am always here to help.

Kind Regards,

Crest_Z

Answer 4

Hi, 

I have been facing the same problem and its really frustrating. 

I have a microsoft surface go and whenever I connect it to my home router, my entire network goes down and the router resets itself. All my other devices get disconnected.

Did anyone find an issue besides doing a factory reset? I cannot even swap/exchange the device due to covid19 situation. This is so disappointing. I tried uninstalling the drivers but it didn't do anything.