Troubleshoot Miracast - Windows 10

Hardware

This might not be your first step, but you need to confirm that your laptop does in fact support Miracast. In my case, although I couldn’t find a definitive answer, I did find anecdotal evidence that Miracast was supported by my laptop. Miracast should be supported on all “modern” hardware.

Video Drivers

The number one item that popped up when I was searching online involved video drivers. “Do your video drivers support Miracast?” “Are your video drivers up-to-date?” These were some of the questions that I saw, but I found it hard to believe that video drivers would be at the root of my problem because I had a brand-new laptop. Despite that fact, the first thing I did was update my video drivers.

DxDiag

After I updated the video drivers, I confirmed that the video drivers would support Miracast. To do this, I opened the Run command line and typed dxdiag.

Once the DirectX Diagnostic Tool (dxdiag) loads, click on the Save All Information… button and save the DxDiag.txt file to your desktop. You can exit the dxdiag tool once that is completed.

Open the DxDiag.txt file and review the Miracast line. You can clearly see in the above screenshot that my laptop and video drivers support Miracast.

Wireless Card and Drivers

Digging deeper, I ran across a tidbit suggesting that wireless network card drivers need to support Miracast. I did some research and found out that my Intel AC 8265 should support Miracast. Similar to what happened with the video drivers, I also found out that there were updated network drivers, so I applied the updated network drivers. Sadly, Miracast still didn’t work.

Firewall

Next, I saw some advice that suggested turning off your firewall in order to TEST if your firewall is blocking Miracast. Of course, I tried this simple trick and again this did not solve the problem. Thank goodness I remembered to turn my firewall back on, so please don’t forget to do this too!

Netsh WLAN Show Drivers

The next piece of advice that I found online involved running a netsh command (Administrator) to see if the wireless display was supported. From the Run command line, open a cmd prompt. Enter: netsh wlan show drivers

The very last line tells you if the wireless display is supported or not! Wireless Display Supported: No (Graphics Driver: Yes, Wi-Fi Driver: No) Finally! It was a problem with the network driver, but how could that be? I updated the driver to the latest version of the network driver and I tested it without any firewalls. What was the exact problem?.

GPO – Good Ole Active Directory

Dell KB to the rescue, Miracast/WiDi Problem After Connecting to a Domain. The article talks about a GPO setting that will prevent Miracast from working. The GPO setting is: Don’t allow WiFi Direct groups. I ran the gpresult command and reviewed the results in order to see if this was my issue. In order to do the same, from the Run command line, open a cmd prompt. Enter: gpresult /h:c:\gpo.html

Here’s how you review the gpo.html file. Start with Settings | Policies | Windows Settings | Security Settings | Wireless Network (802.11) Policies | Network Filters, and then locate Prevent connection to adhoc networks. If this is set to Disabled then you will need to change your GPO settings! Below are the steps I took to update my GPO settings. Update GPO Settings

Open Group Policy Management Editor (you might need an Active Directory (AD) Administrator to do this for you) and locate the Wireless Network (IEEE 802.11) Policies node.

Review each policy and ensure that the Don’t allow WI-FI Direct groups is deselected. Once that is clear and the GPO policies have replicated to your computer, this problem will be solved. Next I will confirm this by re-running the netsh command.

Barco Specific – Button

After updating ClickShare to 1.0.8 and pairing buttons, Windows 10 loads a new driver from the internet. See it under Portable devices? See Barco KB: https://www.barco.com/en/support/knowledge-base/KB9619. It is recommended to use the new driver with Miracast.

When the button is connected (solid white) you can use Miracast regardless of your WIFI configuration. It uses the button config to connect to the base unit and bypasses any existing security. You now have two options:

1. Push the button and connect using the ClickShare client

2. Connect using Miracast and do not push the button, the Virtual WIFI connection is already established via the button (solid white color). Use shortcut Windows key+P to project

Portable Device - Clickshare

The Miracast virtual WIFI Direct Virtual adapter should auto-configure an IP. This adapter enables virtual WIFI connections, your WIFI can now connect to the corporate WIFI and the Adhoc network for screen share simultaneously.

Testing the Miracast Connection

First, I opened the Windows key – P to connect to the Miracast device. I can now connect to a wireless display!