Acer Aspire 5 (A515-56G-51Q6) Bluetooth (and WIFI) disappeared after activating fly mode.

Hello,

I bought last week laptop Acer Aspire 5 (A515-56G-51Q6) for my sister. The laptop has preinstalled windows 11 home.

After activating "fly mode" the icon for Bluetooth and WIFI disappeared. I have spent 5 hours just troubleshooting where the problem is. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi card also disappeared from device manager.

I found them under hidden devices. I have tried reinstalling the drivers, multiple times, restarting the laptop, and troubleshooting in windows safe mode. At last, I have tried the factory reset of the laptop, and the reinstallation of windows.

Nothing helped.

The solution was to enter the bios and load the default setting. (I didn't change the bios at all ... so I don't know why was this a solution of the issue)

The situation repeated again when my sister accidentally activated the fly mode. I have again loaded the default settings in BIOS, which solved the issue.

This is not acceptable for me. Could you please let me know if this is a common problem or I should immediately return the laptop because it looks like a hardware issue?

I am sorry I do not have the screen when the Bluetooth and Network adapters were "hidden"(all Bluetooth devices, and MediaTek Wi-Fi 6 MT7921 Wireless LAN Card). The picture is only an illustration which type of cards I have installed in the laptop.

Thank you very much for your time and quick response.

[Edited the thread to add issue detail]

Accepted answers

William_mk2

@Gyrion

There is no need to run any windows update, firmware update or bios update. After reinstalling windows if the driver is not getting recognized simply go to the link given below try to install the wireless driver, chipset driver and other drivers if necessary.

Kindly go through the details from the link given below

https://www.acer.com/us-en/support?filter=global_download&search=A515-56G

All comments

Puraw

Hi @Gyrion

I assume that you are referring to "Airplane mode" with the small plane icon. Airplane mode disables radio and WIFI connections on your laptop so you won't have Bluetooth or an Internet connection anymore when you activate Airplane mode. Nothing to do with Bios settings. Just disable Airplane mode by clicking on the top right icon (see attached) Notification Bar (far right task bar) and Blootooth + WIFI will be working again.

William_mk2

@Gyrion

Please do not return the laptop. It is a simple settings issue. When you are travelling in a flight , you are suppose to turn on the airplane mode. You can always disable it. When you enable the air plane mode you are not allowed to use the internet. It will automatically disable the wifi. You can always re-enable by turning off the airplane mode. It will automatically turn on the wifi so that you can use the internet.

You can always disable and enable the airplane mode. There is no need to go to bios and reset the bios defaults

Kindly go through the details to enable and disable the air plane mode

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/turn-airplane-mode-on-or-off-f2c2e0a1-706f-ff26-c4b2-4a37f9796df1

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-enable-or-disable-airplane-mode-windows-10

https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001957.htm

Gyrion

@Puraw

Thank you for your quick reply.

Yes you are right I was referring to Airplane mode.

But the Air Plane mode was no more activated when I reached the computer. I expected a blue visible icon. But I saw just missing Bluetooth and wifi icons, and The Airplane mode icon was grayed out. After windows reinstallation, all drivers for Bluetooth and Wifi were missing (maybe because airplane mode completely deactivated the hardware before the reinstallation of windows). I went into the BIOS , just because I run out of all my options.

@William_mk2

Thank you very much for the web article (I found my problem in the section "How to fix Airplane mode problems" ). The Airplane mode icon grayed out. I was not able to use it again (turn it on / off).

So always when the airplane mode will be activated......The icon will be grayed out and I will be forced to use a special command, or completely turn off the laptop, hoping that one of these procedures will help?

You know, because it happened twice in the first week, soooooo I am not very happy with this situation/behavior. Is this a common problem or I am the only one who is hitting this "bug"?

Please do not take this post as a criticism of quality, I am just searching for a permanent solution. At least want to provide feedback.

Thank you very much for your quick help.

Commodore_1995#

Hi! Have you tried updating your wireless network card drivers? what is the version of UEFI?

William_mk2

@Gyrion

Try fn + f2 or fn + f3 on keyboard. It is used to enable or disable the wireless . You need to hold the fn key on the bottom left corner of keyboard and press f2 or f3 on top row of keyboard only once to enable or disable it. It is a toggle key you can see on the top row of keyboard.

I would like to provide a very simple step for you to enable and disable the wireless option on laptop.

Please look the keyboard. Please look at the bottom row. On the bottom left corner you can find the fn key . Hold the fn key and look at the top row. On the top row you can find the f2 and f3 key. One of the key f2 or f3 is a wireless key. You can see the wireless symbol on the top of key.

Hold the fn key and press f2 or f3 only once depending about the wireless symbol you see on the top of the key. It Is used to enable and disable the wireless. Again hold the fn key and press f2 or f3 It will disable the wireless.

Kindly go through the details from the link given below

https://community.acer.com/en/kb/articles/589-enable-or-disable-wireless-networking-on-acer-notebooks

Gyrion

Hello @egydiocoelho

Yes, when I saw BT and WIFI devices under "hidden devices" I tried to reinstall drivers. This didn't help, so I uninstalled wifi card a tried the installation again.

The WIFI card did not appear again in the list of devices, even after restarting the laptop. As I wrote, my last step was full windows reinstallation. But as I wrote, the whole windows reinstallation did not recognize BT and WIFI.

I am sorry, but just today I found an optional firmware update to version 5.42.1.31. I did not notice that this is a UEFI update. Unfortunately, I don't know the previous version.

@William_mk2

Thank you very much for your reply. Yes, I know this possibility to enable/disable the wifi card via the keyboard. I tried also this as one of the steps (with no success).

I think the problem was that the airplane icon greyed out.

William_mk2

@Gyrion

There is no need to run any windows update, firmware update or bios update. After reinstalling windows if the driver is not getting recognized simply go to the link given below try to install the wireless driver, chipset driver and other drivers if necessary.

Kindly go through the details from the link given below

https://www.acer.com/us-en/support?filter=global_download&search=A515-56G

Commodore_1995#

Does the same problem occur after updating windows?

Gyrion

Hello guys. Sorry for the late response.

Here is the keyboard layout of the laptop. Just to describe my testing.

It looks like the Fn key is permanently active because pressing keys F1-F12 alone activates the special function of the key.

For example: pressing key F1 alone will move the laptop to sleep mode.

So after the update of UEFI to version 1.31:

I have pressed F2 (alone). I see that symbol should activate/deactivate wifi card, but it immediately turns on Airplane mode. The icon of Airplane mode was blue. (Wifi and BT icon disappear)
I have deactivated Airplane mode (in windows directly). Icon greyed out but Wifi and BT icons did not appear again.
I tried to activate and deactivate Airplane mode via key F2 again (successfully - I saw a blue icon of airplane mode) but this did not help.

So every time when I accidentally hit key F2 or activate Airplane mode.....I will lose the Wifi / BT card.

@William_mk2

This is not a problem with driver reinstallation. Also, I really don't want to spend half an hour just reinstalling drivers every time when I accidentally hit Airplane mode. Reinstallation of Wifi driver did not help....I tried it, and describe it in my first post.