For those who own a Surface RT, Microsoft released a firmware update during this month’s Patch Tuesday (January 8th). The firmware update provided System Firmware (UEFI) improvements and features improvements to audio playback when in Connected Standby and additional capabilities for handling firmware updates during low battery situations.

Unfortunately, January’s firmware update did not resolve an ongoing issue with the device’s WiFi feature and some users are becoming upset. “Well another patch Tuesday with no wifi fix in sight. Applied the update hoping this would have a fix, began installing some apps from the store and bam, back to limited wifi. I tried going in to the Microsoft Store, but they supposedly had no idea about this problem. VERY FRUSTRATING MICROSOFT! I am a huge supporter of your ecosystem, with my surface, windows phone, and windows 8 desktop, but I cannot recommend this device to anyone else,” one user stated on the Microsoft Answers support website.

The WiFi issue is still being “looked at and is being addressed” by Microsoft. It appears that not everyone is experiencing this issue but those that are having this issue are becoming increasingly frustrated. The WiFi issue revolves around connection issues and limited speeds. Here is an unofficial hack that has fixed this issue for most users experiencing this problem:

To lock Surface to 802.11 b/g band you can use ‘Regedit’

Open Desktop -> Search -> regedit

Open regedit. Select menu Edit -> Find

Enter “AutoUse40Mhz” -> do search

There are 2 such entries in registry. We need to change one, located under “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\” branch

Set “AutoUse40Mhz” to “0” (it has value “1” by default)

Set “Band” to “4” (it has value “6” by default)

Reboot and Surface will connect using 802.11 b/g band.

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