Wifi keeps dropping in Windows 10 (BootCamp) on new tbMBP 15"

These are my replies to Internet connection issues

Re: Internet connection issues

"I just worked this out today to play PUBG on my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, mid 2015)

It's a driver problem, but it seems like you can't do anything about it, but to change your routers Wi-Fi to use 20 MHz bandwidth instead of 40 MHz, we all know the macs hardware is capable to choose between those two, but nobody practically takes responsibility about the sh*tty driver on Boot Camped Windows. Not the hardware manufacturer nor Apple or Microsoft.

My router had 20/40 setting so I locked it at 20 MHz and it magically worked.

How I came to this conclusion:

I had the same issue that many of you seem to have so I resorted to using my iPhone SE as a hotspot and noticed internet connection was stable that way, so I figured out it had to have something to do with the router which I knew was working perfectly well.

I deduced that the iPhone is using some older kind of technology on that matter, I remembered the 20/40 setting from week ago when I configured my router, did some google searches and actually found a discussion about the same issue which proved I was right and decided to give it a try. And here we are.

System specs:

Boot Camp, Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit, version 1607 (aka. anniversary update), build 14393.1480

Broadcom 802.11ac Network Adapter

Driver: Broadcom, 10/6/2015, v. 7.35.118.49"

Re: Internet connection issues

"Seems that people get these connection problems after using the Wi-Fi connection normally for a day or so.

Please read my answer from above and report back later if the driver roll back was/is only a temporary solution.

I was able to play PUBG yesterday, but today I couldn't even open a web page on any browser until now.

Hope this fix works for y'all 😎"

Never said it wouldn't work on 80 MHz,

Like you said it yourself in Re: Internet connection issues "Create a restore point, before you update. There are too many field variations to be able to test in the lab. There are several environmental factors as well."

And I think Broadcom might have changed something in their chips since 2012/2013 so I think the new drivers don't just necessarily work as universally as one would think they do.

And the statement about the responsibility comes from the known fact that Apple tends to say that Boot Camp problems aren't really their issue since Windows is a Microsoft product (though they help people to a certain point with their technical difficulties which is great 🙂), Microsoft says it's hardware manufacturers problem and hardware manufacturers say it's the software manufacturers problem and the circle goes on.

Perfectly understandable situation. This might get solved and probably will, but not maybe as fast as if the problem was on macOS side.

Personally I haven't ever had this much driver issues on Windows PC, but I knew what I was getting into when I was buying a Mac computer and everything I'm doing with it outside macOS is really just tinkering for my own amusement and not so much reason to complain. It's not like I need to use Windows for work.

There are environmental factors with the 2.4G band, which can manifest differently for many users. If it works for you, use it.

Just to provide some more detail:

• I've tried playing with every option in the driver prefs.
• I've tried with and without things connected to the MBP's type-c ports (including power). Without the type-c hub connected it is consistently more relaible, but also still drops.
• I've tried all potential firmware options on the access point including dd-wrt and tomato. (My router is a Netgear nighthawk 7000).
• I've tried varying proximities to the access point.
• Both the .64 driver and the .68

I have the same issue as everyone else but only in one of my 5G networks (I have 2), I have tried all the workarounds listed here but no luck.

I even tried to turn on/off settings on the advanced properties of the device.

So has I said I have two 5G networks, the one that works is using a "Technicolor TG799vac" and the one that fails is a "ASUS RT-N66U", so it seems it can connect to some 5G networks.

johnsimons wrote:

So has I said I have two 5G networks, the one that works is using a "Technicolor TG799vac" and the one that fails is a "ASUS RT-N66U", so it seems it can connect to some 5G networks.

Your Mac is capable of 802.11ac and 802.11n, both. The TG799vac is an 802.11ac 5G network, while Asus should be an 802.11n 5G network. Please confirm.

Some users have been able to connect to 5G N by enabling broader compatibility in the Adapter settings. Have you tried to modify and check? I can post a frame from Microsoft NetMon/Wireshark for you to compare with the 802.11n connection beacons, if you want to check it out. 40MHz bands can also cause issues.

So after disabling 40mhz channels on 802.11a to get my MacBook to connect to my 802.11n 5ghz network in the first place, I noticed that my connection became super unstable, to the point of the connection dropping entirely after a few minutes of uptime. Anyways, I noticed the WAN miniports appearing in device manager around the same time as the connection issues, so I disabled the Microsoft RRAS Root Enumerator (under software devices), and everything seems to be perfect so far. Keep in mind, I have no idea what features are affected by this (probably VPN stuff), but I can browse and play games without the connection dropping, so its worth a shot.

firstwardo wrote:

Not randomly, per se, I was just poking around and noticed that both the WLAN miniports, and the network issues weren't present immediately at boot, so I looked into disabling them.

Disabling WLAN Miniports causes VPN clients to crash. Some VPN clients, for example, Cisco AnyConnect installs it's own mini port driver, and if removed, it crashes the VPN client.

Modifying the band support settings may make 802.11n 5G work on some APs and cause failures on others. If you modify such settings, please also specify what APs were in your environment where this was tested. Anyone who travels and goes to different locations for wireless access is prone to such failures.

The driver on the tbMBP is not negotiating properly what the dynamic settings on the driver should be based on the negotiations with the AP. As an example, 802.11ac on 5G works, but 802.11n on 5G does not, as noted by johnsimons.

Working perfectly thank you for the heads-up.

5Ghz too.

Now I can run without the crappy dongle I had plugged in.

At beeping last.....

No thanks to Apple for releasing it with shoddy drivers in the first place.

cr3x wrote:

It's probably available in the Boot Camp app in MacOS as well, but I haven't checked.

Not yet. 😮 It still has the .64 driver, not the .68 driver. The name of the driver file is

<ServiceBinary>bcmwlhighsd5.sys</ServiceBinary>

Mine didn't even last 1 minute. The updates installed via dongle, and then that was it.

It's so frustrating to not have a product that works as it should. This intended fix did nothing but raise my hopes only for Them to be crushed.

I'll text Tim Cook. Use a few of those nice emoticons.

Ask him to get a grip. I know it's Windows, but I run a domain environment and need to use Windows on my very expensive crapbook with a dongle hanging out.

That's the thing, after installing the update I ran clean as a whistle for hours. Something that never happened before.

Then slowly, randomly, dropouts. Reboot, disable. enable NIC, rejoin network, same crap.

Plug in a $10 USB nano WiFi dongle and it works 100%

smokeandapancake wrote:

I know it's Windows, but I run a domain environment and need to use Windows on my very expensive crapbook with a dongle hanging out.

Tell Satya Nadella. 😁.

Seriously though, your 'crapbook' should also support 802.11ac. Can your environment support 11ac?