Solving the Wifi issues in Windows 10 build 10158
First let me put something down here for all to see: Brian Noyes is an exceptional man.
Today, I upgrade my HP Spectre (the one from Build) from Windows 10 10130 to 10158. The old 10130 is not very good to say the least, something that even some at Microsoft would acknowledge. It caused a lot of issues to my test machine, such as breaking the audio completely (hence no “Hey cortana”), breaking both IE and Edge and breaking a number of other applications including Skype.
That’s why I was eager to install a new build, and especially since I heard many say that it is much closer to “the real thing” than anything we had before. And indeed it’s true, it is faster, snappier. Cortana just works. Everything looks much more polished, which is great. I love these last phases of a new operating system where everything falls into place.
Except for one thing: I couldn’t connect to a network using Wifi. It just didn’t work. I talked to Microsoft, who investigated and found that upgrading from 10130 to 10158 could in certain cases break the wifi… just what I had indeed. One of my fellows RDs suggested a workaround that worked for him: Deleting the network (in Settings / Network and Internet / Manage Wifi Settings / Manage Known Networks). However this also didn’t work for me.
Thankfully the wired connection worked fine, but still, mobility is such an integral part of how I work (including writing this blog post from my garden while watching the sunset over the Uetliberg) that I was really bummed without working wifi. I even considered repaving my machine to an older build of Windows 10 and upgrading from there
But lo and behold, entered my good friend Brian Noyes! He had the same issue but had the idea that actually solved it: Go to Device Manager, locate your Wifi driver (Device Manager / Network adapters), right click on it and select Uninstall from the context menu. Then reboot your laptop.
After the new start, Windows will re-create the Wifi adapter and you should be good to go. At least this worked on my machine ™.
Happy coding!
Laurent