Intel ax200 on Acer Aspire 7 A715-71G-546G (i5-7300HQ, 1050)

Corgano

I recently got an intel ax200 wifi + bluetooth 5.0 adaptor for my laptop notably because the bluetooth performance on my laptop was pathetically slow - pairing a ps4 controller took 3 or 4 tries with how long it took my laptop to recognize it, past laptops this was almost instant between 2-5 seconds. After installing the new ax200 unit i found my wifi works perfectly fine. However the bluetooth device doesn't appear in device manager. Any ideas?

brummyfan2

Hi,
Could you please check the driver version for the AX200 in Device manager under Network adapters, in Device manager, expand Network adapters, right click Intel AX200, select Properties and go to Driver tab to find the Driver version.
You could also go to Settings-> Devices and check whether Bluetooth is switched on.

Corgano

B. Bluetooth is impossible to turn on if windows doesn't think you have a bluetooth device
A. 21.50.0, the newest drivers available for the ax200 bluetooth. The drivers are installed, but it doesn't look like it sees the bluetooth device to drive.

Corgano

Laptop model is actually a A715-71G-57JW
i5-7300HQ with HM175 chipset. Came with a Qualcomm Atheros QCA61x4 adapter

doing a bit of research, I found the ax200 uses a pcie interface for the wifi and a usb interface for the bluetooth, all provided by the m.2 socket. My working theory is that the socket on the motherboard doesn't have the usb bits. I could google the QCA61x4 and see what it uses, but i'm having a hard time figuring out what interfaces it uses exactly. Any ideas?

Corgano

Edit: Original chip is a Qualcomm qcnfa344a

brummyfan2

Hi,
I think the socket is compatible with the card.

Corgano

This fix worked for me
https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/549994/intel-9260ngw-bluetooth
Taping over these two pins (wifi disable pins) keeps the system from disabling the card, forcing it on.

This may have unintended side effects, there was some reason WHY the system was disabling it. MAybe it was a good reason? Maybe it was hard coded to a specific card. Maybe it was trying to protect itself from a card it knew was bad. By taping over the contacts you take away the systems ability to disable it, so it can have unintended side effects. IT's not likely, but still could fry your system. You have been warned.

As for me, everything seems to work fantastically so far.