Intel Wireless 5300 - why has Windows 8 support been removed?

[idata]

I have an Intel Wireless 5300 card.

I upgraded to Windows 8 on release day.

My pre-installation check did not say that my Wifi card was incompatible.

All installed ok and was working fine. I came to the Intel website to check for a driver update, the information said to download and install driver 15.3.50 for the Intel 5300 on Windows 8.

I did this and all was working fine until yetsterday when suddenly my wifi stopped working, I could not get an IP address via DHCP, however setting a static IP works.

I came back to the Intel website and the info regarding the 5300 Intel have now changed the info to say my card is not supported in Windows 8!!

What is going on? If I'd known my card wasn't supported in Windows 8 I WOULD NOT HAVE UPGRADED to Win8.

I have been mislead by Intel, this is a disgrace.

Intel need to provide drivers for the 5300, otherwise you can refund me the cost of my Windows upgrade or send me a new card which DOES work in Windows 8.

I would appreciate a response ASAP regarding this from someone at Intel, seeing as your "Contact us" link is next to useless.

Regards

James

[idata]

Hi helicon9,

Please note that this Intel® Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300 was released back in 2008, Intel has already moved forward by designing and implementing newer generations of adapters which have complete support in Windows* 8 as they are integrated by manufacturers in new systems.

We are precluded to discuss with the general public the reasons why the business units opted not to support the Intel® Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300 in Windows* 8.

We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Here is the following link to check which operating systems are supported with Intel wireless products:

http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/CS-031641.htm http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/CS-031641.htm

[idata]

Thank you for your response.

However, you have not explained why the position was changed AFTER windows 8 was released.

Intel have had long enough with the windows 8 beta to decide which hardware to support.

Your website was showing that the 5300 was supported in windows 8.

You have mislead many customers into believing their hardware would be supported should they upgrade to windows 8, apologising for the "inconvenience" is not good enough.

I don't think that hardware from 4 years ago should be considered archaic. Intel are just contributing to the huge problem of perfectly good hardware ending up in landfill because of the continuous unnecessary micro improvements, revisions and generations of hardware.

Thank you for your time.

James.

[idata]

I have the same problem with my Dell XT2, which for me is only a few years old. I ran the compatibility checker before purchasing Windows 8 and no issues were reported. I paid for the upgrade and then invested 2 days of my time upgrading my system. The wifi worked great for a few days and then today it stopped working for no apparent reason, at the worst possible time.

I am now connected using a 5 year-old USB wifi adapter from RealTek that IS supported by the manufacturer and I am trying to figure out a solution that doesn't require me to have something sticking out of my $2000 laptop.

Intel, this is crazy that you aren't supporting a 3 year old product! Can you at least suggest an upgrade path?

This thread suggests that this is not possible:

[idata]

Mine is a Dell also.

I actually installed the 5300 myself as the card that came pre-installed wasn't Wireless N.

I believe Dell don't lock their adapter slots so you should be fine to install a 6300 I should imagine, maybe worth checking on the Dell forums.

Mine is actually working ok at the moment, I do get occasional lost connections though, so I'm sure the driver isn't working optimally.

[idata]

So it sounds like your 5300 IS working with windows 8, but it is intermittent? This makes sense because mne worked for several days and then randomly stopped, which makes no sense to me since I didn't change anything in the system.

Any suggestions on what settings i can play with to see if I can get this to work? Intel support hasn't responded with an upgrade path, any thoughts on other internal (non-USB) solutions that might work? I'd rather have a flaky wifi link and have to carry a backup USB stick then have to always have a USB plugged in.

[JRuss8]

Hello, I have a Dell Inspiron 1520 which is like.. 5+ years old, I don't recall exactly; but it came with a WiFi Link 4965AGN. I was experimenting with Windows 8 inside a virtual machine and decided to install it in another partition, only to find out that even though there was a driver for my card Windows would show a BSOD at random and quite frequently. In the OS by product support link above it states "inbox driver" for this card, whatever that is; but it's not good enough for daily use.

What I did after trying to find any solution to it was to buy a new wireless card, an Ultimate-N 6300 which is another 3x3 MIMO like the one I had but this one is supported under Windows 8. I bought a new one over eBay and it was about $21 shipping included so it wasn't too expensive.

The only problem I found was that the 4965AGN I had was a full height PCIe and the new one was half height (I had a bracket around somewhere so I could install it), but the antenna cables were not long enough to reach a half height one. After following the cables I found out they were enough but I had to un-tape them in one point for them to reach.

Now everything is working as it should, I'm pretty happy with the result. In your case because you're using a 5300 you won't have the problems replacing it for another card because it is already a half height one. I'd recommend looking for one of this cards, the replacement is pretty easy to do too.