My new u310 gives really low speeds on wifi

[charwhee]

Here's my question - is this a hardware or a software/driver issue? 

If it's a problem with the antenna I want to have it repaired under warranty.

If it's a software/drive issue, it needs to get fixed.

But more than anything it would be good to see some communication by Lenovo about the issue. With so many users encountering the issue, I haven't seen anything on it other than the one comment by the Lenovo CS person in this thread.

[freshmasch]

lenovo didnt write anything for like two weeks! Return your notebooks as long you can, they never gonna release some patch cuz its a problem that cant be fiexed that easily. if its just a bios error there would already  be an update. Its been like almost 3 months and they didnt do anything. Nobody is that slow. The company is crap they just **bleep** with their customers. Im never gonna buy any of their products again. Its cheaper for the company to just deny that there is a problem. What they do is unacceptable! Think about it, every ideapad u310 and 410 has it and they didnt even take an officical statement about that issue. What kind of company is that.One that doenst care about it customers at all. So please return your notebooks as long as you can.  It says everything about how they deal with the problem. Im recommending everybody not to buy anything from lenovo again!!!!!!!!

Mod edit:  Removed comments that were against Forum rules.

[wayne07]

Lenovo must show some responsibilities towards their customers who had bought this product. I don't care whether it's by replacing internal wifi card or by giving some cash.

[bolol]

Hi everyone, I have been tracking this post and I'm sad to say that I, like many of you, am sitting right in front of my router in order to send this message. I do have one suggestion though...

Please make sure to log onto the Lenovo website to give this model a BAD review so others do not make the same mistake of buying this model. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only way we may get some attention or at least updates!

I have been a huge fan of Lenovo since the IBM days and unfortunately I may be jaded after the lack of response and updates from them ....I have a feeling we may see things pan out years from now when the class action lawsuit for this model ends up paying out

Here's to hoping a fix comes but my corporate sales rep has already gotten an earful from me

[ianmcmill]

Hello,

I bought the U310 yesterday and I am experincing the same low wifi speed, too.

The laptop has an Atheros AR9285 wifi+bluetooth card. I have a D-Link DIR 635 router.

I tried all possible wifi settings on the router and the laptop but cant get higher download rates than 50 kb/s. Most of the time its about 10 kb/s. Trying several drivers didnt help too. Research on the internet showed that the Atheros card is causing these problem on laptops from other manufatureres as well. 

Replacing the card will void warrenty. Anyways the BIOS seems to have a whitelist with compatible cards reducing the possibilites drastically. 

There are modified drivers available from all versions of the wifi driver that has more settings available like switching between b g n and so on. This doesnt help ether. 

Could the support say some clear words please. This is really a disappointing experince.

[kenf3]

Did some testing over the weekend with my son's u410 and my Dell 11z using the inSSIDer program to monitor the wifi signal strength and the www.speedtest.net site to monitor download speeds. With the D-Link 655 router upstairs and our notebooks downstairs (~20 feet wifi path), both notebooks were getting ~2 Mbps. When we moved to another downstairs room ~40 feet away the u410 struggled at ~0.3 Mbps while the Dell still managed ~ 2 Mbps. Tried another room also ~40 feet away downstairs but with more house structure in the way and the u410 wouldn't run the speedtest.net test - the Dell managed ~1.5 Mbps.

In the first location the u410 signal strength was 10 dBm worse than the Dell (-60 vs -50), in the 2nd & 3rd locations they were generally -70 and -60 respectively. If you left both notebooks idle for a minute, the u410 signal strength bounced around +/- 10 dBm while the Dell was much more stable. When you started the speedtest.net test, the u410 signal would usually drop 10 dBm so it seems to struggle when downloading data and then recovers when idle.

My son has a wireless mouse plugged into one of the USB 3.0 ports on the right side of the u310. When we unplugged it, download speeds jumped up - even better than the Dell. Didn't do enough testing with this config to verify the pattern but my growing theory is that the u410 wifi might be operating on the edge of stability and when stressed (download test, weak signal, or other electrical noise) the error rate jumps and the data rate drops significantly. Someone else posted their u310 wifi shut off when they plugged in an external hard drive into the USB 3.0 port and when they unplugged it the wifi worked again (too much data/electrical noise?).

We tried plugging in the AC adapter to see if the u410 wifi would be more stable but it didn't appear to help.

We later tried disabling the built-in wifi and installing an external USB wifi adapter (like others have done) and also got improved/acceptable signal strength and download speeds liek the Dell. Since my son is going off to college in a few weeks and the dorm wifi access points will likely be more than 20 feet away, we're going with one of those $30 mini USB wifi adapters as he's happy with the u410 otherwise.

Maybe if Lenovo can't identify a fix, they'll at least send me a $30 Visa card

[dpt]

I believe all the U310 and U410 present and future owners are on their own now. Return machines if you can and if you have crossed that period just buy usb wifi adapter. I dont expect any fix coming around. Feeling slightly dejected with the treatment. Regretting the fact that i did not go for MacBook Air and brought this just to save few bucks.

[skazimax]

Dear Lenovo! I was wating for yor answer for 14 days, today i returned my u310 to the shop, bye.

[ianmcmill]

I found that other Laptop Manufatuerers have the same problem with the atheros ar9285. Over in the HP forums a user told the story of a live chat with a support guy. The support knew exactly about the problem with the card and he sent him a new one. No Atheros but a Ralink. Ralink wifi stuff is known for its good stability and compatibility.

I can not imagine that this current problem is fixable with a software hotfix unless MS maybe further improves it's "newly" introduced network stack something. 

There is also the possibility that the x64 drivers do not work well with windows seven x64.

Only a Linux installation/live disc may prove this.

Anyways, imho a replacement of the Atheros Wifi + BT module would definitly fix the problem. But imagine Lenovo amits this and seems itself confronted with replacing every card they sold with U310/U410. I do not wonder support is overlooking this thread/problem.

So, replacing the card with a new one breaks warranty. Bad idea if you want to get refunded.

The other thing with replacing it is that the description on ebay for compatible broadcom wifi + BT cards says they do NOT RUN ON HP/IBM/Lenovo. But I dont know how much this states the truth. So you risk to void warranty AND get a card that simply does not run on this U series because of BIOS whitelist/restriction for hardware replacment.

The other alternative is to buy a external mini wifi usb stick. Not very classy anyways.

I have also heard that Windows Update could have something to do with this. Some Windows Update introduced MS's own Atheros drivers which could be a cause but as I already tried like 34 different drivers this seems unlikly.

Some users reported that version 8.0.0.172 solved most of their problems. I tried it and it work with me. I got higher download rates. On my 2mbit xDSL I got a decent 200kb/s of 230kb/s directly next to the router. BUT after 10 minutes the speed was down at 10-50 kb/s again. So no real improvement.

 [ADD]

forget that about the 5-10 minutes, it was more like walking through the house. One level under the router and the speed dropped to 30-40 kb/s. Back at the router the speed did not recover and stood at 30 kb/s. Disabling Power Managment for the card doesnt help either.

[lamecake]

@ianmcmill

The wifi problems are also present on different brands of wifi modules used in the U310/U410. (The Intel one for instance)

Also, with linux the same wifi problems have been reported, so it doesnt look like a driver issue (or both linux and windows drivers should have the same errors)