Bluetooth Stopped Working in Windows 10 (Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377)

Question

I have an Asus T102HA which has an integrated Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 WiFi+Bluetooth adapter. The Bluetooth suddenly stopped working this morning and as a result the wireless mouse no longer works (this is how I knew Bluetooth stopped as I was using the machine at the time).

I checked in Device Manager and the Bluetooth devices were greyed out though they were not disabled (had to enable 'Show hidden devices' in Device Manager to see the Bluetooth section in the device tree).

I proceeded to uninstall and reinstall the Atheros QCA9377 driver as available from the Asus website (https://www.asus.com/uk/support/Download/3/919/0/1/EKnJ4vWdmuN3xLti/45/). Upon reinstalling the driver Bluetooth is no longer listed anywhere in Device Manager.

I have run the "Scan for hardware changes" in Device Manager but this does not detect anything new.

It is as if the Bluetooth device no longer exists on the system. However, WiFi is working fine which would suggest that the device itself is presumably ok and still present.

The only possibly suspicious thing to note in Device Manager is a device under:

Universal Serial Bus controllers > Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed).

I have no USB devices connected to the system so it is unclear what this unknown USB device is above - perhaps it could be the Bluetooth adapter but I don't seem to be able to get that unknown device to find a driver update online.

The Windows 'Bluetooth Support Service' is running and can start/stop successfully - it is also set to Automatic startup.

Airplane mode is not enabled and toggling it on/off has no effect on the Bluetooth situation, though it does turn WiFi on/off as it should.

I am out of options that I know of to troubleshoot this as Bluetooth isn't showing up no matter what I do.

How can I troubleshoot further and get the Bluetooth adapter reinstalled properly?

Solution 1

After reading this, here's roughly what I did:

• Uninstalled the Unknown USB device from Windows Device Manager (it was stating "Device descriptor request failed");

• Went to Asus official drivers website, downloaded the latest bluetooth drivers for my motherboard and installed them;

• Shutdown the computer, and "unplugged" the power for more than 30 seconds;

After powering it back on, windows had Bluetooth working again.

Keep in mind that I had reinstalled the Bluetooth drivers multiple times, always restarting the computer in between, and nothing changed. Only after unplugging the power did I actually manage to solve this issue.

This tells me that the underlying issue was hardware related, and depriving the motherboard from power reset the Bluetooth hardware to a good state.

Solution 2

Fixed this with the following steps:

• Uninstall the unknown device from Device Manager (Universal Serial Bus controllers > Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed).)
• Run Action > Scan for hardware changes from Device Manager

This re-detected the Bluetooth adapter and associated devices.

Solution 3

This is a common problem with ASUS products with 802.11ac qualcomm wireless with Bluetooth 4.0 & 4.1. If the Bluetooth disappears from the device manager and reinstalling the drivers doesn't work, use a Bluetooth USB dongle, you can get one for 3.99-4.99 on Amazon. Attach it to your PC or other Windows device. This will install generic Bluetooth driver. Then reinstall qualcomm Bluetooth driver or update qualcomm Bluetooth driver if it now shows up in the device manager. Then remove the USB dongle, and reboot the PC. Your qualcomm Bluetooth will now work. I know it sucks to pay 3.99 to fix it, but trust me I had this problem for 2 months until I found this solution.

Solution 4

This worked for me after hours of trying to fix it with Microsoft support!

I fixed it with the following steps:

• Uninstall the unknown device from Device Manager.
  (Universal Serial Bus controllers -> Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed).)
• Run Action -> Scan for hardware changes from Device Manager

This re-detected the Bluetooth adapter and associated devices.

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Comments

[ofzza]

As weird as this is, powering down for 30 seconds fixed the issue for me on my Dell XPS. Before this, numerous restarts, uninstalling/reinstalling of drivers and anything else I could think of did nothing ...

[CSJ]

Worked for me. Embarrassingly for all of us, the classic advice "turn it off and on again" actually worked this time.

[pegla]

Give this guy a medal - I'd give you 100 thumbs up because I really tried 100 drivers and things and turned it on and off before/after driver installations and I always wait around 5-10 seconds before plugging back in but I really my driver was actually good - I just installed it - turned computer off and had to count 30 seconds to make this work. Thanks a lot.

[Shaohua Li]

Powering down for 30 seconds fixed the issue for me. Thank you!

[Yoeri Van Nieuwerburg]

So, my problem had nothing to do with corrupt USB devices or whatsoever, but it came down to my BT being able to detect devices with generic names, but was not able to connect and/or detect their actual names. The power unplug did the trick.... weird that "out of the blue" stuff like this is being buffered or something in memory....