ASUS PCE-AC56 & Windows 10 driver issues.....

[ShortHand]

Product in question.

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Networking/PCEAC56/

Current Router is an ASUS RT AC68U

Long time SNB creeper. Thought I would finally make an account to discuss a long-running issue I have been having with this card and solved in case anyone else has the same issue. Ever since I switched to Windows 10 I have been having nothing but issues with reception/signal strength and transfer speeds over the network to my media server. ASUS has no drivers on their website and instead provides you with this for the PCE AC56.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/PCE-AC56/Windows_10_Plug_and_Play_Support.pdf

The driver included with windows 10 is absolutely useless. Transferring to my server over either 2.4 or 5ghz never crack about 26 Mbps. BEYOND frustrating. The same can be said with any internet downloads. my 50 Mbps connection all of a sudden became a 26 Mbps.

I tried every Broadcom chipset driver under the sun and nothing worked. Router positioning, different channels, antenna positioning, I even plugged my Netgear R6300v2 back in and experimented with that as well. It all ended up in a similiar result. I was about to give up and just go back to a Linksys USB dongle I had laying around until out of desperation I tried a Windows 8.1 driver. Driver version 6.30.223.245 to be specific.

Well......


Voila ! problem solved! Transfer speeds are at about 49MB/s at 12 meters from the router with 3 beefy walls in between us on the 5GHZ band and the 2.4GHZ band is back to normal as well. Signal strength and overall stability are great as well.


Hope this helps anyone having issues with this card! I have talked to Asus tech support and they have no current Windows 10 drivers in development.

 

[dafalck]

Where did you find the Windows 8.1 driver, I have been looking and I can´t seem to find it. Do you have a link to it?

 

[ShortHand]

Where did you find the Windows 8.1 driver, I have been looking and I can´t seem to find it. Do you have a link to it?

They just released a wireless utility which should have a driver with it. A customer support rep from Asus finally answered a customer support complaint I filed months ago and said this should now work with the utility. (Replaced all drivers across Windows 7 to 10.)

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/PCE-AC56/UT_PCE_AC56_v2138.zip

If that newer file they supplied does not work for you then I need to need to hook up my DVD drive and grab the file off a disk I burned it to*

 

[Pipodi]

Hi,

I'm facing the same issue. I tried everything, even installing the drivers/utility from ASUS website, but it makes my card unstable and it can't connect to any network.

 

[Phas0r]

I tried a Windows 8.1 driver. Driver version 6.30.223.245 to be specific.

Hi all. In case anyone out there is still using (and having issues with) this WiFi card and comes across this thread, here's some additional info.

First, I found a source for the driver version posted by the OP. At least, I believe it's the same thing. Just download drivers for what is nominally a different device, what is, I assume, a built-in WiFi card for some Acer laptop: Acer Aspire E5-471 Broadcom WLAN Driver 6.30.223.245 for Windows 8.1 64-bit. From Softpedia, here:

https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/NETWORK-CARD/Broadcom/Acer-Aspire-E5-471-Broadcom-WLAN-Driver-6-30-223-245-for-Windows-8-1-64-bit.shtml

From the description, the driver number and Windows 8.1 designation matches, and of course it says that it's from Broadcom.

After download, ignore the most obvious, top-level Setup.exe, but go into the WLAN folder and run the Setup.exe from there. The top-level Setup file is for installing some Bluetooth utility.

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More importantly, this driver did NOT resolve my problem(s). No matter what I do, this thing refuses to work properly in Windows 11, on the 5 GHz band. The 2.4 GHz band works perfectly fine. My WiFi is provided by an old Buffalo WZR-600HP running DD-WRT. It doesn't have any modern protocols like AC. Maybe this card would work better on newer protocols?

Anyway, I of course started with the very latest drivers on the ASUS website. I tried different driver versions, including the one given by the OP. It's always mostly the same symptoms: either it refuses to connect to the 5 GHz band at all--with Windows saying "can't connect to this network"--or it does connect to it, and signal strength appears healthy, but nothing actually works, with websites not loading. I tried fiddling with router settings a bit, but no luck. Like I said, no problems whatsoever with 2.4 GHz. My router is old and slow, so not sure whether it or this WiFi card is the bottleneck, but I got 25.5 Mbps download speed on the 2.4 GHz band, with that 6.30.223.245 driver installed.