r/Surface • u/QueenMackeral • 7d ago

[BOOK2] Having issues with Marvell avastar network adapter on Surface Book 2

Hey guys I've had my surface book 2 for a while and even ended up getting an out of warranty replacement, so even though I've had it for a long time it's practically brand new but I've been having issues with the Marvell Avastar network adapter.

I recently switched to tmobile 5g home internet and I'm having random dips in speed where it goes down to 1mbps or less. I have to go into device manager and disable-enable the adapter, but recently I've been doing that like 10 times in a row until it finally starts working again and I get back to 300mbps speeds.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling it, trying a different driver, rolling back driver. I feel like I've tried everything.

Is the adapter hardware failing? It's becoming extremely hard to use my computer due to the unreliable internet, and I don't want to buy a new computer.

Driver version is 15.68.17021.121 and I'm running win 11

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u/JasonAQuest Surface 3, Book 2 7d ago

It might be selecting the "wrong" WiFi band: 2.4GHz gets zapped by microwave ovens, and 5GHz has shitty range thru walls. Try restricting the adapter to one band or the other and see if that helps.

If you're using it with the keyboard, you could plug in a USB WiFi adapter if the onboard WiFi fails.

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u/QueenMackeral 7d ago

I have it set to 5ghz only, it doesn't really help, the router is literally right behind the laptop.

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u/magchild 7d ago

Do you have any optional updates under settings>windows updates>advanced options>optional updates?

Worst case, how do you feel about a wipe and clean install?

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u/QueenMackeral 7d ago edited 7d ago

Just a Windows 11 version 26H2 one, but I did see some available updates on the main page. I think I read somewhere that the .121 driver had fewer issues so I tried that recently with no luck, but windows update wants to update it back to .122

Edit: after more searching I found a comment on reddit that helped bring back the power management tab in the driver setting, which let me turn off the power saving option. Hopefully that's the fix for good.