Deleted WiFi driver on Surface laptop 3

Question

Good evening all,

Thanks in advance for any help that you can provide.

Firstly, I appreciate that many of you will read this and likely say 'why were you so stupid in the first place', but here we are, I'm in a difficult situation and would hugely appreciate help in fixing the issue.

I'm currently on a long term travelling trip in South America with my laptop, a couple of months ago I experienced WiFi connectivity issues. I tried various troubleshooting methods before resorting to Google search, which ultimately lead me down the path of deleting the WiFi driver. I was lead to believe that the WiFi driver would reinstall on restarting the laptop when windows detects the missing driver. This seemed suspect to me, but I read it in more than one place so went ahead with it, safe to say the driver did not reinstall and I'm now left with a laptop that has no WiFi driver and as such no internet connectivity function.

Since this happened, I have tried the obvious fixes such as multiple restarts. I also performed a system restore to a point before the WiFi driver was deleted but this also didn't work.

I've tried downloading the recommended WiFi drivers direct from the Microsoft website but have also not had any luck there. The file I downloaded came from this link - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=100429. The file at the time of download was called 'SurfaceLaptop3_Win10_19041_22.011.9779.0.msi' (the name of the driver on the list now looks to be slightly different - assume a newer version).

I downloaded the file using an internet cafe computer, put the file on a USB stick and downloaded it onto the laptop. I started the install process and all was going swimmingly until I got this error message:

'This hardware platform SKU (Surface_Laptop_3_1873) must be one of the following:

Surface_Laptop_3_1867:1868, Surface_Laptop_3_1872.

Aborting this operation...'

I'm hoping someone is simply able to send me a link or point me in the direction of the exact WiFi driver I need, I can then use an internet cafe to download the file, load it onto my USB and ultimately install on my laptop.

To clarify, there is no WiFi driver listed at all in my network adapters list when looking through the control panel.

Again, any help on this would be massively appreciated!

Many thanks,

Dec

Answer 1

Hi Declan Stephens,

Thank you for reaching Microsoft Community. We're sorry to hear about what happen with your Surface device. Based on the error message you provided, it's possibly the file that you have downloaded is not the right configuration of your device. For Surface Laptop 3 we 2 configurations the AMD and Intel. Make sure to choose the right configuration.

If still doesn't work. I recommend you to reset your device. Before you reset your device and reinstall Windows, you can choose to keep your files or remove them. Refer to this link for the details Restore or reset Surface for Windows (microsoft.com)

Kind regards,

Lavenia

Answer 2

This is amazing, thank you.

Turns out from my Google search, the only driver downloads coming up were for intel processors but mine is AMD.

Now all fixed.