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Wireless Projection / Miracast option disappears from Microsoft Surface Pro 3 / Windows 8.1 after joining a Active Directory Domain

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We recently deployed some Microsoft Surface Pro 3s (love these devices) for our Executive team along with some new equipment in meeting / board rooms with Wireless Display capabilities. During testing with my personal SP3 (not domain joined) the wireless display worked a treat, so I expected it to work fine on the ones we would be deploying.

After about a week, one of the managers shot me an e-mail saying he couldn’t see the option for wireless display, that night he had performed a reset of the device, came in and had the option, but once we joined it back to the domain, it disappeared. I started digging around Group Policy to see what was causing it to disappear and found that these devices were getting an old “XP” based Wireless Network Policy.  I upgraded the policy which then gave us some extra options, including allowing / disallowing Wi-Fi Direct.

Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings >Security Settings > Wireless Network (IEEE 802.11) Policies

The setting Don’t allow Wi-Fi Direct groups which needs to be disabled can be found under the “Network Permissions” tab. From what I can see, any Wireless policy configured for XP doesn’t have this option and a machine will simply disallow it.

upgraded policy

How is Miracast or WiDi related to Wi-Fi Direct?  Well basically Wi-Fi Direct allows devices to connect directly to each other, without the need for a Wi-Fi AP, which is exactly what your surface is doing when attempting to stream the display straight to a TV / Projector.

Once we had this option turned off, ran a gpupdate on the machine and viola, wireless display showed up and began working.

 

2 responses to “Wireless Projection / Miracast option disappears from Microsoft Surface Pro 3 / Windows 8.1 after joining a Active Directory Domain”

  1. Giovanni Avatar
    Giovanni

    If that doesn’t work or doesn’t show up. I was able to get it to work by doing the following:
    * open regedit
    * Go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Wireless
    * Deleted Windows XP Folder
    * reboot machine

    not sure if this will stay permanent after a gpupdate but worth a shot

    Reply
  2. Giovanni Avatar
    Giovanni

    If that doesn’t work or doesn’t show up. I was able to get it to work by doing the following:
    * open regedit
    * Go to ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsWireless
    * Deleted Windows XP Folder
    * reboot machine

    not sure if this will stay permanent after a gpupdate but worth a shot

    Reply

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