wifi unavailable after sleep on Win7

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wifi unavailable after sleep on Win7

Hi,

My wifi adapter (Broadcom 802.11ac according to windows) crashes nonrecoverable every time my mid 2014 15" Mac Pro Retina goes to sleep under window 7 professional 64bit. Once the mac awakes from sleep the wireless adapter seems gone and is only shown in the windows device manager with a yellow exclamation mark. Normally disabling and enabling a crashed device helps on windows to bring it back alive but it doesn't here. The only way to get wifi back working is currently to restart windows 7. Otherwise wifi is working completely fine under windows.

I have installed windows 7 using the Bootcamp installer so I expect all the drivers to be the latest available once. I was looking for a newer windows 7 driver on the broadcom website but didn't really find much. My windows is fully up to date and the driver version the device manager on windows 7 shows for the wifi adapter is 6.30.223.215 from 13.12.2013.

I have searched a fair bit online to find similar issues, but didn't find much. So I'm wondering if it's just me? Are there others with similar issues or people with the same setup with no issues?

In case it matters the rest of the specs of my refurbished mid 2014 15" Mac Pro Retina are: 2.8GHz, 16gb Ram and 1000gb SSD. Please let me know if you need any more details.

I appreciate any help, currently the computer is very hard to work with under Windows which I unfortunately need for work.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), Windows 7, null

Posted on Feb 26, 2015 4:31 AM

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Answer 1

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Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 26, 2015 5:06 AM in response to sonic936

Under Device Manager -> Broadcom 802.11ac -> Properties -> Events, can you see what events have taken place on this adapter? Do you have any wireless issues on the OS X side?

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Answer 2

sonic936 Author

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Feb 26, 2015 5:51 AM in response to Loner T

Thanks for the quick reply. With events you mean device Manager -> Broadcom 802.11ac -> Properties -> General tab what is shown under device status? Can't find a specific thing called events...

After coming back from sleep it says "This device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device. (Code 31)" under device status in the general tab.

I have now tested what happens when I hibernate the machine instead of putting it to sleep. When hibernated the wifi comes back on afterwards without any problems. So I also tested what happens when I put it to sleep so that wifi stops working, wake it up again (wifi not working), hibernate it and wake it up again -> after hibernating wifi is working again here as well. At least I can now avoid having to restart by hibernating instead to get wifi back working.

Since the computer is new I haven't used it that much with OS X either but I didn't notice any major issue that I could clearly attribute to wifi. While downloading some software packages under OS X wifi stalled a few times during the download, pausing the download and resuming it would fix that though. Not sure if that was due to my internet connection or if it also could be a wifi issue. I would have to do further testing there, but I don't think its related.

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Answer 3

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 26, 2015 6:04 AM in response to sonic936

Hibernate should save the state of the OS, including the drivers, but sleep does not. Hibernate also looks for Devices in the Registry who may not have had their drivers loaded. Events I was referring to can be seen in the highlighted tab.

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Answer 4

sonic936 Author

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Feb 26, 2015 6:20 AM in response to Loner T

I'm afraid I don't have the "events" tab - or at least I don't know how to get it......

This is what it looks on my end when things are working...

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Answer 5

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 26, 2015 6:50 AM in response to sonic936

You are on W7. Use Event Viewer and filter on the this adapter using the Device Node UUID.

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Answer 6

sonic936 Author

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Feb 26, 2015 8:32 AM in response to Loner T

No idea how to figure out the UUID of my wireless adapter, here some screenshots from the event viewer that seem to be connected to the wireless problems.

After returning from sleep:

After returning from hibernation:

The message in the last one says:

The description for Event ID 14 from source nvlddmkm cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event:

\Device\0000009d

CMDre 00000000 00000454 01200000 00000004 00000010

I hope what I provided here goes in the right direction. If it doesn't then I'm sorry but I'm afraid I would need more detailed instructions to get this done as I have never done any of this before. Thanks for your patience.

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Answer 7

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 26, 2015 9:14 AM in response to sonic936

Please try Boot Camp: Install or repair Boot Camp drivers.

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Answer 8

sonic936 Author

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Feb 26, 2015 1:21 PM in response to Loner T

I have repaired the bootcamp driver as described and rebooted but the problem remains. Any other suggestions?

Thanks again for your help.

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Answer 9

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 26, 2015 1:52 PM in response to sonic936

Can you boot into OSX and post a screen shot similar to the following?

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Answer 10

sonic936 Author

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Feb 26, 2015 1:58 PM in response to Loner T

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Answer 11

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 26, 2015 3:09 PM in response to sonic936

Can you look at Wireless Adapter permanently disabled after sleep mode - Windows 7 64 bit and check for any Firewalls?

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Answer 12

sonic936 Author

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Feb 28, 2015 6:50 AM in response to Loner T

Thanks for pointing this out. I'm using a security suite from Bit Defender and it will take some time to test this. I will get back to you once I have removed the security suit and can say more about it. Just completely deactivating the firewall did not make a difference.

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Answer 13

sonic936 Author

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Apr 15, 2015 7:04 PM in response to Loner T

It's been a while and I have still not tested removing the Bit Defender Security Suite as I'm relying on the machine for my daily work. Today I have noticed something else interesting though, when I put the laptop to sleep and wake it back up the wireless adapter is not only not working, it has also been renamed and a "#2" had been added to the end of it.

I did a search on the "renaming of the wireless adapter issue" and found this windows 8.1 related thread 5640 drivers and Windows 8.1 ... some hardware issues Any thoughts on this?

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Answer 14

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Apr 15, 2015 7:29 PM in response to sonic936

I can add to KNNSpeed's comments a bit more, but his analysis is pretty much correct. The order of loading drivers when Windows8 comes out of sleep is not the same as the order in which the drivers were initially loaded. This causes the memory-mapping for drivers to get ordered differently. Windows, to protect itself from corrupted memory and potential buffer overflow attacks, creates a new instance of the driver. The TB/Ethernet adds to the misery. If the computer goes to sleep without this adapter being plugged in, the adapter is connected, and the lid is opened from sleep to active state, the network adapter order is no longer the same. The adapter instance ids are shuffled, yet again.

There is an additional issue for Wireless. Let us say you are at Starbucks1 which has a Google Starbucks SSID, and move to Starbucks2 which also has the same SSID and if a password is added, you run into complicated scenarios of authentication as your adapters change. The script link is a workaround for unloading the profiles, and loading them back again. Not a very good alternative, but it may work for you.

I also agree with the Microcenter person, who advises against using W8+ sleep mode.

I have stuck with W7 with sleep disabled, despite many wanting W8 (and I am not a fan of the W8 UI anyway). For me W8 is on a test MBP for non-critical work.

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Answer 15

sonic936 Author

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16 points

Apr 16, 2015 6:47 AM in response to Loner T

So pretty much there is no real solution for making wireless work after the computer has been in sleep mode on a new 15 Mac Pro Retina running Bootcamp with Windows 7?

I know that the above threat was about windows 8 while I'm using windows 7 but it was interesting that I also have a renaming of the wireless adapters under windows 7. The main difference seems to be that with windows 8 there is at least a usable wireless adapter after sleep even though it might not remember all the wireless networks and passwords. With windows 7 the wireless adapter however seems completely dead after the laptop has been in sleep mode.

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