Stream 7 wifi drops

[leo_kendall]

mine was like that to before i solder the wire.  maybe the power cord acting like an antenna?  or the wifi adapter is in some sort of power saving mode when on battery?

[Annelizabeth]

I ran powercfg and found the following:

"Connected Standdby has been disabled due to non compliant hardware"  WiFi hardware Not Compliant - the hardware in question is the router, which does not support WPM mode, so the OS won't let thewifi modem enter power saving mode, only I don't think the modem cares. when it's unplugged from power, it seems go to sleep every 6 or 7 packets.   and then wakes up in a second or two. On other windows 8.1 machines, there's power plan options for the wifi card that let you keep it awake, but not on this one. 

If I connect to a WPM compliant router, it works fine. 

[Annelizabeth]

FIXED IT...... well, more like hacked it to work.

so, my problem was dropped packets (over 50%) when on battery, but OK when plugged in.  I also had the ocassional dropped connection as well

the problem is that you cant tell the NIC to not go to sleep (it's not a power plan option available)

what I did was used the command  POWERCFG /SETDCVALUEINDEX    ..........

it allowed me to change the plan values directly  so I changed the wireless plan to PERFORMANCE (000), the same as AC.

suprizingly it worked. Since it involves a bunch of long strings I made a batch file and ran it as administrator. 

the basis of my problem was that the NIC was ignoring the request to stay awake but the OS wasn't, so the OS never thought to wake it up...at least that's my theory.. I had the exact same problem with my toshiba 7 inch tablet as well, which I traded in on this..

OK, apparently I wsa premature.  I did a restart and after that  it still fails about 1 in 10 ping requests,  but a lot better than over half. 

[FooTheTiger]

Like most here I've had some issues with my brothers and my Stream 7s. But to be honest I haven't had as much 

trouble as some people.

I've read a lot of the pages but not all so apologies if something similar has already been said...

While the Wifi battery drain issues are certainly real I believe that the over night battery drain I experienced was 

partly due to these tablets running full windows 8. Windows, by default, runs its automatic maintenance (updates, 

security scan, diagnostics, etc.) at 2am. There's a check box (that you can’t uncheck) to allow automatic maintenance 

to wake up the machine at the designated time for said maintenance. Shutting it down would probably block the battery

drain, although auto maintenance will run when the tablet is idle at other times if it misses the maintenance window. 

There is probably a way to disable auto maintenance but I just side step this issue by plugging in my tablet every night, 

just like my phone, to charge.

I didn’t really think about the crappy battery life or the few network hiccups I’ve had (it is a $100 tablet after all) until 

my brother complained about a quick battery drain after turning on bluetooth. I ended up finding a “fix” that seemed to 

work in our situation(s) before I even found this forum. I say “fix” because I’m sure some of you have tried this without 

the same results but I’ll state my experience just in case it hasn’t been said.

What I did to both my stream 7 and my brothers was pretty simple:

1. I downloaded the realtek network driver from hp’s support site for the “stream 7 - 5709”
   (filename is sp69310.exe,I originally thought it was a newer driver based on the hp date but it is the same driver 
   version as the out-of-the-box driver once installed however it did something to clear up most issues)
2. I uninstalled the realtek 8723BS driver in device manager 
   (device manager>realtek RTL8723BS device>driver>uninstall) AND checked the box to delete the driver 
   software off the computer
3. Rebooted the tablet and verified that the network driver has been uninstalled and the tablet now has no network 
   access
4. Then I reinstalled a fresh copy of the network driver from sp69310.exe I got from HP

At that point, our 7s seem to be working pretty good for $100 tablets. I haven’t tested network speed or dropped packets
but it seems to work acceptably now with only a few network drops and I'm losing <1.5% battery per hour now with

wifi/bt on. My brother still has some issues with his home network but my home network and both of our work 
networks seem to play nice with the 7s.

I also did all windows/hp updates including firmware.

FWIW my home router (that seems to work pretty good with the stream) is some motorola router/modem combo device 
that is set to TKIP+AES, Channel 1 and 802.11B/G only (N is disabled). I’m not sure if it supports power saving features.

Like I said, some of you have probably already tried what I did without the same results but I would give the fresh driver 
reinstall a try if you haven’t already, it may help.

[photobloke]

So a little update from my side.....

Yesterday I swapped out my Stream7 at the MS store.  The tech there had agreed to do that when I chatted with him a few weeks back if I couldn't get the wireless/Bluetooth radio issue sorted out.

When I got home with I charge iit up and connected it to my LAN.  I ran no-updates on it from HP.  All my testing is with the device plugged in as well, as the Stream sits in my media centre.  WIFI driver is 3007.6.901.2014.  LAN connection is fine at a constant 72mbps.  It builds my Xbox music library fine.  No drops on wifi at all.  This is the same as with my original device. Start playing audio over internal speaker, and that's fine.   I turn bluetooth on, and pair it to my AV systems.  Start playing some audio, immediatly there is audio stuttering over the AV system, and then boom, the LAN connection drops and I can't see my network shares or external access.  Turn off bluetooth on the stream7 and reconnect to the LAN and everything is fine once more.

Turn BT back on, start playing, and lo and lo and behold there is audio stuttering.  This is also streaming an MP3 file from my own network, not from the internet.  I stop playing audio, go to bed and leave the Stream7 overnight.

This morning, Stream7 has remained connected to the LAN and my library is still there in Xbox music (4300+ albums), which is how I know the network connection has remained stable.  Did a quick test of playing audio over bluetooth to a couple of devices, and audio is still stuttering.  So it seems that the chipset with the stock drivers can't cope with with WIFI traffic, Bluetooth traffic at the same time (or processor/disk activity).

Next I did an update to the drivers on the DriverTek site, 3007.9.1015.2014  WIFI connection has stayed solid, but playing audio over bluetooth is still stuttering.  I think it may be better, but it's still stuttering.

So, now i'm doing all the windows updates on the stream.  But I'm not doing any other HP updates yet (BIOS, etc.).

So i have now had two machines that are incapable of accessing the lan and streaming audio over bluetooth at the sametime.  That rules out a dodgy radio in the hardware, unless I have been statistically incredibly unlucky....

I'm actually not sure what to try next, other than just remaining connected wired to my AV centre.

Cheers,

DavidM

[eriri-el]

Reporting on the new driver posted by HP, driver version 3007.10.1031.2014 dated 21/11/2014. I can say its worse compared to previous drivers. It does not really bring any power savings as stated on the website, but instead causes more connection drops, especially during connected standby. And when it drops, it doesn't reconnect back properly, as in I only receive an IPv4 address, no IPv6 address, even though before the connection drop, both are working fine. I had to disable and enable the adapter just to get back my IPv6 address. HP, please don't introduce drivers that make things worse. It's already bad enough.

The same driver version, but dated 12/11/2014 floating around the internet, does not cause this problem, so I rolled back to that by the way.

[MoritzCH]

I still have WiFi drops on my Stream 8 (tried many things i.e. new driver, disabled the encryption .... very disappointing) so are they working on this matter?
Maybe uninstalling the bluetooth driver could be a solution but I am not sure about this ....

[D_A_H]

I found with my Stream 7 that having both the WiFi and BT drivers on and updated resulted in much better throughput and stability. I know, doesn't make sense, but that is the way it is. I tried w/o BT running and the connection was very unstable. Now, no problems.  Maybe the hardware is an itegrated device and the 2 HW devices have interdependancies.

Good luck

[maydogg]

Here is an update with my situation.

A few weeks back, after dealing with poor connectivity, the wireless lost all function. No SSIDs could be found ever. The windows diagnostics and BIOS diagnostics indicated that the wireless was working fine. I tried different drivers and restoring the system, but nothing worked.

I contacted HP support. Before they had the chance to go through the troubleshooting script, I laid out all the steps I had already taken. I was referred to a supervisor who authorized a return. It was pretty painless.

I had to cover shipping, but the rest of the exchange was free of charge. I was sent a new unit, a Stream 8. After unpackaging, I booted it up to find that it had no wireless drivers installed. I had to attach an OTG cable with wireless adapter to download windows updates and updated drivers from the HP website.

After the reboot, wireless worked fine. The new device could see the SSIDs that the old stream 7 could not. The wireless on the previous unit must have been malfunctioning, I am glad that I did not void the warranty and try attaching antennas as some of the other posters had.

[Ivieg8]

First let me say that i am very dissapointed in HP for not even commenting on this issue over the course of this thread which has been running for a solid 2 months now.

I own several HP devices, from printers to laptops to z820 workstations, and never have i experienced as many issues with one device as i have with my Stream 7. 

i have the headphone buzzing issue,

i have the wifi issue, but it goes much further, maybe i havent seen the posts but my issues on my device seem more extensive... i should return it I know...

-wifi radio does not boot with the device 90% of the time, i am force to restart the device over and over some times as many as 10 times before the tablet recognizes the wifi radio.

-my power button cannot be set to turn screen off only, it only allows me to set it to shutdown, as in one quick press shuts it down...

-the bios update through the HP support assistant WILL NOT install, it downloads just fine but every time it fails on the install... "Ganges/ Colorado 1.0 System BIOS Release" under action log, it shows "failed items" and lists the Bios release, it shows "softpaq number:" but does not list a number, also "version:" but blank again... size: 6.88MB

-the screen has pixel issues or something odd, basically around the taskbar, the icons are missing pixels (just black) especially with motion, and above the task par it looks like someone spraypainted black dots all over...

this device has alot of potential and is awesome for the price, but i can't belive HP actually released this to the public as buggy as it is...