Broadcom Bcm43xx 1.0 Windows 10 Driver
Mariko Bloomgren
Background- Network works fine, router works fine, connections is perfect when running Mac OS. I happens on every wireless network I use. I already submitted this question in the Apple StackExchange, but after some research it's leading me to believe this is a Windows 10 problem:
New information- Something that seems to have helped, but did not fix the problem was unchecking "Allow computer to turn off this device to save power". Although, somehow the device still got turned off.
WiFi will randomly disconnect when I run Windows 10. It works better on certain networks than others but it's always intermittent. Even on very robust networks it will eventually begin to drop. Once it drops it sometimes will simply not reconnect. Other times the drivers will randomly be disabled, not sure if this has to do with windows updates.
I tried manually installing and uninstalling drivers, rolling back drivers, installing and reinstalling the windows support software, and even using third party driver support software. Wifi connection still drops randomly with no perceivable pattern.
I went to the apple store and I was simply told that this is a windows issue. I had windows running on a MacBook air (2010) and never experienced these issues. It also seems they haven't come up with an update for the driver in almost two years. I ran out of ideas, any pointers on how to fix the wifi connection problem is appreciated.
Don't know if you still have this problem but I had this issue and after months I finally found a fix that worked for me. I used this random lonovo driver found here . I Found it by checking out which driver my GF was using on her older MBP on windows 10, and this one was very similar. It seems to have completely fixed this issue for me, hope it helps you as well!
Wireless is bullet proof when running OSX. 100% reliable for months for general internet browsing and massive 100+ gig file transfers to my home theatre system and backup NAS. I only experience the intermittent connectivity when running bootcamp windows 7 x64. Tried updating the driver to the original osx bootcamp one, tried the broadcom ones that comes with windows etc... Always the same crap or they refused to install. Tried the latest one from apple via the update also with zero joy.
The only key difference I'm seeing from you is that the wireless adapter did install when installing the bootcamp drivers. It also behaves intermittantly. It associates with my access point, and I can see that L1 and L2 are fine, I even see DHCP requests and get an IP address. It may work fine for a few hours or a few minutes or seconds and then suddently it craps out with a yellow triangle and black exclamation mark on the tray icon. When it does crap out, I notice that in the connection status that it's not receiving any packets anymore. More likely the IP stack on the driver is dropping corrupted packets or something similar and it is actually receiving the packets, but dumping them. Next step is to sniff the interface and be 100% sure that the packets are coming in. I need to be sure that L1 and L2 are being maintained and not dropped without windows telling me. Eitherway, this does seem to be a driver issue. What would be nice would be be able to clean the registry and all old driver files to start again with a clean slate without having to scrub my Bootcamp partition.
This answer is based on an extensive research done by various Ubuntu users that worked together in almost all issues related to Broadcom. Special thanks to chili555 who helped in the Ubuntu forums and on this site with many questions related to Wireless devices and to others who have contributed through E-Mail, chats, IRC and more in testing various drivers with several of the most popular Broadcom Wireless cards (Huge Thanks to Chili555 really. This guy knows his stuff).
In total we wanted to offer an answer that could be easy to follow and covered most Broadcom Cards / Drivers. After you follow this guide, you will NEED to test your wireless connection for at least 2 hours (I actually recommend 8 hours) with another device in either Ad-Hoc Mode, Infrastructure Mode or Both. Common problems that will be solved (Apart from drivers not installing) are:
There are dozens of Broadcom wireless cards and more seem to appear every day. The key to finding the correct driver for any network card is what is known as the PCI ID (PCI.ID). To find out which PCI.ID you have, we proceed to opening the terminal by pressing CTRL+ALT+T (It should open a window with a blank background) and inside this terminal we run the following command:
The PCI.ID in this example is 14e4:4320 as seen inside the Brackets [...]. In some cases you will also need the revision version (if it appears) for some special cases. In this case, the revision version is rev 03 as shown inside the Parentheses (...) at the end. So what you will need after this search is:
With this new information you can look in the table below and select the appropriate method to install your driver. For example, In this case, since you have the 14e4:4320 rev 03, if we go down the list to the one that shows the exact same PCI.ID you will see that in the columns for Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04 it shows the firmware-b43-installer package driver. This means that you will only have to install this particular package since it appears in all Ubuntu version columns.
NOTE - Before proceeding, if you have previously installed any drivers, have blacklisted or uncommented any driver files or configuration files or have done any changes whatsoever to the system to make the drivers work in previous attempts, you will need to undo them in order to follow this guide. We assume you are doing this from scratch and have not changed any configuration files, modules or drivers in the system in any way (apart from updating the system). This includes any installations using apt-get, aptitude, synaptic, dpkg, software center or manual compilation and installation of the packages. The system has to start from scratch in order for this to work and to avoid any conflicts that may appear if earlier work was done.
Now using the PCI.ID you found in the steps above, we then search in the list below to find the matching PCI.ID and the method to install the driver associated with it in a simple and correct way. The terminal will be used to avoid any GUI related issues. This applies with all cases, except as noted. The installation procedure is done only via terminal and also while connected to the internet with a temporary wired ethernet connection or USB modem or any means possible that can give your PC, for the time, Internet access. After you find in the list below the correct package we then proceed with the installation.
Assuming you used the PCI.ID 14e4:4320 rev 03 as found in your search above, and then looked at the table below and found that the correct package to install is the firmware-b43-installer (Specific to Broadcom) and the linux-firmware (Carries over Broadcom related drivers along with other types of drivers), we then proceed to simply install this package in the terminal:
For All cases, always install the linux-firmware package if it is an option on the table above for that particular Broadcom Card. This will always be up-to-date with the latest Broadcom drivers along with other binary files that could be needed depending on the driver PCIID.
In hardware like the Lenovo S10-2, if your wireless card gets stuck trying to connect to an SSID (keeps trying to connect), then the alternative to get it working would be to install the bcmwl-kernel-source package (Remove any other installed packages related to it). Read the Debugging section below for more information regarding this wireless device.
IMPORTANT NOTE - After September 2014, if you follow this answer and still you have problems installing the correct driver, please try the firmware-b43-installer package and the linux-firmware package and notify us via comments. There were some changes and some drivers will only work with this package. Remember to have a clean system before installing it:
To give an example, after going to point 1 mentioned above, If you had theBroadcom 14e4:43a0, you would search for the bcmwl-kernel-source package and after selecting the corresponding Ubuntu version (In my case 16.04 or Xenial) I would land on the following page:
In some computers, before performing the commands, you will need to deactivate the Secure Boot Options in your BIOS. This applies for cases, for example, where the bcmwl-kernel-source is already installed but the driver does not yet work. You can do a reinstall like so, or disable Secure Boot by going to your BIOS Setup:
The following information is additional material to read about solving various issues related to Wireless Management and conflicts with other Network devices. Know that it some cases you need to have an updated Kernel version, since each new version of the Kernel introduces either new Network drivers, improvements over existing drivers or solves bugs regarding them.
Before reading the points mentioned below, be sure to have all repositories enabled on your Ubuntu system. To check, run on the terminal software-properties-gtk and make sure all options on the Ubuntu Software Tab are enabled.
If your connection drops every so often some users have suggested to set IPv6 to Ignore. Just go to Network Manager (The network icon on the top panel). Click on it then select Edit Settings. Then go to the Wireless connection you are using, select it. Now go to the last Tab in there that mentions IPv6 Settings. In the Method field select Ignore.
If your laptop does not detect your wireless card some users have mentioned that using rfkill unblock all will solve the problem. Others simply turned the WiFi switch on their laptops off and then on again (Physical switch available on this laptops). For more information about rfkill please read rf kill unblock all DOES NOT WORK!
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