8 comments


  • […] With the default plans with the Surface Pro 3 you only have “balanced”.  By enabling Hyper-V in Windows 8.1, you now can control the power that the WiFi is getting, and I changed mine to Maximum Performance.  Since I did this, the WiFi connections of my Surface Pro 3 have been much more realizable and consistent.  You can read more how to do this in this article:  How to turn on Hyper-V on the Surface Pro 3. […]

    July 09, 2014
  • Chris Brooker

    What you fail to mention is that the limited Power Plans are there to support Connected Stand By (AKA InstantOn). This enables the SP3 to turn on and off like a tablet and stay connected to update tiles and such while “off”. (up to 4 hours).

    By enabling Hyper-V you disable Connected Standby and lose the ability to “Sleep” the device. The Wifi issues have been acknowledged by MS and a fix was sent out in an update on July 8th. Although the update fixes the wifi speed issues while on battery, it doesn’t fix the limited connectivity problem when waking up.

    July 09, 2014
    • Hello Chris:

      Yes, I did leave that part out, on loss of sleep. I will make a point of adding this later tonight. I was not as concerned on the loss of sleep for my workflow, instead just having a consistent WiFi connection was a lot more important.

      To be honest, I am also a bit concerned that if Hyper-V is left off, then the user may not be able to get the max from the i5 or i7 (when it ships) as with any other laptop I have used with windows, unless you check “high performance” you can’t get the full speed of the i5. I realize that Microsoft supposedly has coded this so that when needed the processor can go at full speed, i.e. when larger applications are running, but I doubts in my mind on just how good that will be. They did not get the WiFi power right and IMO for the average user, a non consistent WiFi would be one of the biggest issues.

      As good as the S-Pro 3 is in new design, Microsoft should have had done a better job on getting the firmware/bios a bit more solid. It’s just hurting them in the long run.

      July 09, 2014
  • Dan Burke

    Thank you! This corrected my frequent VPN disconnect issue. I never would have considered installing Hyper-V just to get the WiFi device to show up in the power profiles.

    Dan.

    July 17, 2014
  • Ethan L

    Hey, I saw your article and got really excited. I purchased a surface pro 3 but was disappointed when there wasnt a high performance mode for minor gaming, or a power saving mode for school. I tried everything in your article, but nothing worked. Was there some update to the machine that made these options unavailable? It would be really helpful, if that was the case, to do an updated version. Thanks!

    August 18, 2014
    • Ethan, it works for me with no problems. I had it turned off, but went back through the same steps and it will come back on. You have to reboot the PC and make sure that you accept the changes, as if you don’t before you close out the box on programs and features nothing happens.

      Make sure you are going to control panel, programs and features, advanced, hyperV should be right then but the check box will be empty. Once check, hit apply, this loads some code. Then reboot the PC. Should work fine.

      I am running the latest firmware from Microsoft and I can still enable/disable it.

      Paul

      August 22, 2014
  • Paul Laba

    I have an Asus T100 tablet running Win 8.1. It has the same problem described here (dropped Wi-Fi connection). I;m certain this problem is related to Connected Standby because it only happens when my tablet is running on batteries (not connected to its AC adapter).

    I was encouraged that I could resolve this by enabling Hyper V, but it appears that feature is not available on my tablet — when I click ‘Turn Windows feature on and off’, the list of Windows features does not include Hyper V. Is Hyper V only available on Surface Pro tablets?

    Is there another way to disable Connected Standby and enable the standard Sx Sleep modes instead? (I’ll happily trade off connected standby to avoid having to manually reconnect Wi-Fi every time I press the Power button).

    Thanks.

    February 27, 2015
  • Cheryl A Matzker

    Curious if the first box, net framework 3.5 (includes Net 2.0 and Net 3.0), is supposed to be unchecked. I unchecked mine since that is how it is pictured in your article.

    I am hopeful this will help…ALOT. I bought the top of the line SP3 and have been having issues with updates and speed. Trying to watch videos on you tube and to stream on Twitch was hopeless. I just played a you tube video hours ago that stopped over a dozen of times and watching it after making the power changes, it never stopped once so I am confident and wanted to say thank you.

    September 10, 2015

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