Stream 7 wifi drops

[europorsche914]

i have a stream 8 and I don't notice the issues you guys are describing with your 7's but I am familiar with it as the Toshiba encore 7 had the same problems... Out of curiosity from the earlier internal photos of the stream 7 and the missing antenna wires, I decided to open my stream 8 up to take a look. There are roughly 8 small Phillips screws and no stickers so I don't think there is any way to know that you opened it up.. You will notice in the photos, all of the antenna connections are used in the 8. The antennas are located on both the front, back, top, bottom and left side of the tablet. I hope someone finds these pictures helpful if not interesting!

[Ivieg8]

Not sure if its just me, but i cant see your pics

[europorsche914]

i can see them when im logged out.. as for the picture quality, not much i can do. the reflective foil on the battery wreaked havoc on the autobrightness

[OldGuyMN]

I don't see the pictures either.

[europorsche914]

looked into it, they are awaiting approval...

[Annelizabeth]

hmmm.... maybe that explains why my 8 always works and the 7 can be problematic. 

still not clear to me why disabling the 'acpi-compliant control method battery' makes the 7 work and has no effect ( network wise) on the 8.    the saga continues. 

[SPECTREofDOOM]

Anyone want to tell me where I can find that 3007.10.1031.2014 LAN driver dated 12/11/2014?

I have searched all over and can not find it anywhere.

I'm using the newest LAN driver that came out in January 2015 and I can not keep a Wi-Fi connection to save my life. It drops...I reconnect...it drops...I reconnect...it drops...I reconnect...it drops...I reconnect...it drops...I reconnect...it drops...I reconnect...it drops...I reconnect...story of my life right now.

TIA to whoever can help me out here.

[leo_kendall]

Factory restore? 

[FlipD9]

---

@FooTheTiger wrote:

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.

---

Until HP figures out why version sp69310.exe of the driver worked and give us better battery life, using this version of the Wi-Fi driver worked best in resolving issues with the Wi-Fi. I actually downgraded the driver to sp69310.exe, make sure to uninstall the installed driver from Programs and Features as well. While all other drivers are to the latest version, I can't speak about any issues with the Bluetooth since I have not used it.

[robertmwilliams]

I thought I would share what for me seems to be a solution to the constant switching to "limited" on my HP Stream 7.
This may not work for everyone as I have only tried it on 2 Stream 7 but I have not have had a network issue in the week since I tried this.
As always this is "at your own risk". I am not responsible if it makes your tablet explode, causes male pattern baldness, reverses global warming and plunges us into a new ice age, causes your girlfriend to realize that your brother is less of a jerk than you...
Well you get the idea.

One thing to note is that I was using a mouse when I did this so adjust the "click" and "right click" in the instructions below to their touch screen equivalents if you are not using a mouse.

1 - FIRST thing is to download current HP driver from the HP support website (do not use HP Support Assistant) THEN download the dell driver here (thanks to horst0815 for the link): http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/product/dell-venue-8-pro-3845-tablet/drive...
2 - run the exe file that was downloaded but choose to extract only (it will not properly install using the install program) noting where the files are extracted to
3 - remove the existing driver using device manager, selecting the remove files option
4 - restart the tablet
5 - check device manager and see if there is an unknown SDIO device present. if not you may need to repeat steps 3-4 again (I had to do it twice)
6 - once you see an unknown SDIO device right click on it and select "Properties" from the pop up menu
7 - on the next screen choose the "Driver" tab and click on the "Update Driver" button
8 - next click on the "Browse my computer for driver software"
9 - when the next window is displayed click the "Browse" button
10 - use the explorer file browser box to navigate to the directory where the files in step 2 were extracted. the directory structure should look something like this: C:\drivers\drivers\production\Windows8.1-x86\WLAN-Driver
11 - click the "OK" button
12 - follow any on screen prompts to complete the install of the driver
13 - restart the system once the driver install is complete
14 - you should now have a working wireless device. connect to your router if it is not automatically reconnected on restart
15 - (optional but I did it) download and install the latest bluetooth driver from HP. Be sure to download only the bluetooth driver.
16 - restart if you installed the bluetooth driver in step 15

This has been a very stable solution for me and I have not seen any "side effects" using it.
Before my connection would switch to "Limited" once about every 30-45 minutes for as long as I was online.
With this work around I have not had a single instance of it happening.

Hope this helps someone out there as well.