Realtek networking issues with W10 (Acer among others)

Irish Steve

A heads up for anyone updating to Win10 on a device that has Realtek network hardware, it may not work with the drivers that are provided by Microsoft, and the updated drivers may not be available automatically.

Acer E5 laptop here, which I let update over the weekend, but had significant hassles with the network not working reliably after updating, it would work for a while, and then lost all connectivity which could only be resolved with a reboot,

Looked at the Acer site, there's a lot of updated drivers and a BIOS update for 10, but that didn't solve the issues.

I then had a look at the Realtek site, and there's a new driver on that site for W10, and also updated drivers on the same date for earlier OS releases, downloaded the W10 versions, removed the old driver rather than updating in place and it now seems to work without issues, though it's early days.

The file you need is 0003-Install_Win10_10003_08202015.zip

One of the reasons I decided to let W10 upgrade this machine was because of problems with W8.1 network issues, I am now wondering if the updated driver might also have resolved the issues with 8.1.

mrtom

You seem to know your way around the Acer support site.
I have an Acer Aspire E1-571 stable on W 8.1. Acer have a list of models that support W 10 upgrade (see link) and my laptop is not listed, Acer support were not able to help clear up what that means for me. I assume we are talking device drivers, thoughts?

http://www.acer.co.uk/ac/en/GB/content/windows10-eligible-models

Irish Steve

Device drivers indeed, the machine here is relatively new, (March), came with 8.1, and had become increasingly unstable online in recent weeks since upgrading to Fibre, and with 10 now available, (and a need to be more informed about 10 for support reasons) I let my machine install 10 after taking suitable backup precautions (complete disk clone).

!0 installed reasonably easily, albeit it wasn't fast, but it was horribly unstable on the web, using Ethernet, until I found the needed driver on the Realtek site, which seems to have solved the issues with it dropping off line.

Re your machine, it might be worth checking that model number in more depth, as I can't see it on the Acer site, yet it seems to be a recent age machine, so it's possible they are describing it slightly differently, to be completely sure, see if it comes up with something different by putting the Acer SNID on to their site, and see what it says it is.

mrtom

Re your machine, it might be worth checking that model number in more depth, as I can't see it on the Acer site, yet it seems to be a recent age machine, so it's possible they are describing it slightly differently, to be completely sure, see if it comes up with something different by putting the Acer SNID on to their site, and see what it says it is.[/QUOTE]

The E1-571 does exist ! 18 month old shipped with W8. With drivers for W 7; W8; W8.1. Bios updates etc, just not on the Acer W10 list of "supported models".
Fortunately no Realtec components. So should I hunt thru the various device manufacturers for W 10 drivers ? Just wish to avoid what you had to deal with.

Irish Steve

Not sure what to suggest in that case, with the age the machine is, it should be OK with Win10, but if Acer are not planning to provide driver support for it, that could cause some issues if something is not compatible with W10.

Seem strange that a relatively new machine would be ignored, unless there's something about the config that makes it a problem to run W10 on it, but if it's running 8.1 with no issues, it should be OK with W10 as well.

It might indeed be worth checking the devices on the machine and then having a look at the sites for those device manufacturers to see if there's any updates. The biggest worry would be if there are any BIOS Issues with W10, as that would have to be down to Acer.

Sorry I can't be more help.

mrtom

Thanks, you were a lot more helpful than Acer.