No BT ever, even with new WiFi card...
RAS001
Member Posts: 17 Troubleshooter
Hi All,
I'd like to find out if my Aspire E731 has (or does not have) the hardware to use BlueTooth? I believe it was a Win10 machine that I downgraded to Win7x64. I just changed the WiFi card from a 2.4g to a 5g (both with BT radios and two antenna lugs) and this new card fails to operate as the old one did. The sticker to the right of the touchpad states "802.11b/g/n + BT", the oddity in all this is everything "appears" to show BT, yet it fails to discover any nearby devices. Could all the applicable drivers load even if the hardware support is not there? I have zero errors and all drivers show to be working properly. Discovery is totally non-existent with either card...
Russ
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Answers
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RAS001 said:
Hi All,
I'd like to find out if my Aspire E731 has (or does not have) the hardware to use BlueTooth? I believe it was a Win10 machine that I downgraded to Win7x64. I just changed the WiFi card from a 2.4g to a 5g (both with BT radios and two antenna lugs) and this new card fails to operate as the old one did. The sticker to the right of the touchpad states "802.11b/g/n + BT", the oddity in all this is everything "appears" to show BT, yet it fails to discover any nearby devices. Could all the applicable drivers load even if the hardware support is not there? I have zero errors and all drivers show to be working properly. Discovery is totally non-existent with either card...
Russ
Well, the issue seems o be with the driver more than anything. To answer your question, YES! Your device has Bluetooth and YES, it will support both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz if that is what you're asking for. However, you are not finding any Wireless Devices, then this seems to be a problem within the Wireless Driver. First update that and if that has failed, turn on the Wireless Hotspot on your phone and see if it finds it. If you are still unable to find any drivers, then you need to probably change the OS as this has happened due to an unsupported OS.BElieve in YOUrself.0 -
I can let my machine go out and search for new drivers and it says they're all up to date. The MS BT drivers are all from 2006, the Atheros drivers are version 10.0.0.336 dated 1/29/2016. The card did not come with drivers and those are the newest I could find.
Original (2.4g) card: Qualcomm Atheros model QCWB355 (actual card)
New one (2.4/5g) is: Qualcomm Atheros AR9462A (side of purchase box)
On second thought, this was a Win7 machine, it was one of the few I could find at that time that came with 7. I was thinking of a Toshiba I had bought and tried to roll back to 7. That failed miserably and after 6 weekss of trying, I reinstalled 10, sold it, and bought this one.
Russ
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Do you see a BT icon listed anywhere in the system tray? Jack E/NJ
Jack E/NJ
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If Device Mgr shows no issues, right click on the BT tray icon. Can you test to see if it can receive an image file sent from, say, a cellphone? Jack E/NJ
Jack E/NJ
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JackE said:If Device Mgr shows no issues, right click on the BT tray icon. Can you test to see if it can receive an image file sent from, say, a cellphone? Jack E/NJ
How's that gonna work if it never pairs?
Yesterday's searching found the file "bt-8.0.1.305-win7881.zip" that installed BT4.0 Suite, which worked (sorta) as device mgr failed to find all necessary drivers. At least I know my hardware is working cause it actually found my phone and paired it. Then I got greedy, tried updating the failed devices, and blue-screened my puter which caused me to ultimately restore my entire c drive's image from the previous day. This morning, someone over on MyDigitalLife posted a link to a newer version of this BT4.0 suite which installed perfectly but (again) does nothing. I'm gonna see if I can uninstall this new one, reinstall the old one that worked, and hope the newer driver signatures stay on my puter...
Russ
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Finally got it! I remembered that I had to uninstall ZoneAlarm in order to install the WiFi card driver, so I did that for the BT 4.0 Suite and it all works. The BT Suite did fail to find a couple drivers, but it's not affecting anything...
Russ
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Congrats. Non-MS anti-malware seem to cause more issues than they're worth. Defender is about that's needed and avoids this kind of hassle. Thanks for letting us know. Jack E/NJ
Jack E/NJ
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There's also a "solution" to the unknown drivers too. I'm thinking it's a hack and does little, but it does clear up the unknowns. Now my DM is pretty again.
Russ
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