Atheros AR5BBU22 pretending to not exist  

Sorry if this isn't the right place for this.

I'm having some (probably) unrelated BSOD problems that I was working on earlier when I noticed on the bottom of my laptop that I have a bluetooth module! Great. I went out to the internet to find the drivers, and installed them, restarted my computer, and ... nothing. The computer restarted normally, and behaved as it had before I installed the drivers. I know that the drivers are correct because I downloaded the set from the manufacturer's website. I looked in Device Manager to see if the module showed up there, and I couldn't find it.

I've scoured the internet for anything that might be related to this issue, but I got no dice.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

The bottom of your laptop could be incorrect (I have also seen netbooks that had the holes and symbols for inserting the SIM card in the onboard 3G modem when the model didn't have any).
Especially if it is an Acer. But anyway, it's common to list drivers for bluetooth (or wifi cards) that aren't present in all products of the same model.

Can you have a look at what wi-fi card you have? More often than not they contain the bluetooth module too.
Should be behind a removable cover under your laptop, and will look roughly like this (can be shorter and have less cables) There should be no need to remove the card from its place, just remove the cover to see it and the sticker on it.

Also, what is the model of the laptop?

Tis a travelmate 8573T-6443

"This Device contains Bluetooth module ATHEROS AR5BBU22"

It goes on about the serial numbers and such. although i noticed it lacks an FCC Logo. Instead, there's an ANATEL logo, which i think is the FCC of Brazil, or something like that. I'm uploading all the pictures I just took of my wireless cards. Don't bother asking for more because there's really nothing else to see, unless you want me taking apart the entire unit to hunt for the module. All I have to work with is this one panel that houses the hard drive, RAM, wireless card, and the empty port that seems that it could hold a bigger wireless card.

Anyhoo, I think I remember seeing the previous owner of the laptop using bluetooth with this computer, and maybe even using it myself. Since then, I put in a new hard drive after he gave me the laptop, and just noticed that the bluetooth was missing.






On another note: What is with the uploader absolutely refusing to let me use png images? Its the default for my camera and I like it that way.

Great work on the pics!

Ok, so the bluetooth is an internal module. No, won't ask to dismantle the laptop to get at it.

When you changed the hard drive did you reinstall windows? and if so, did you install chipset drivers? They are needed to run non-standard stuff.

Btw, when you installed drivers did you run their hw vendor detection utilities? it's the"Need to know the hardware on your system to choose the right drivers?" in the driver download page.

Do you have "Unknown Devices" in Device Manager? (should be under "Other Devices")

If yes, follow this tutorial to manually identify the device.

Another try is downloading the bootable Iso file of this, burn it to a disk or on an EMPTY USB drive with rufus and boot from it.
Then look in the PCI devices list if it says something about Atheros, Broadcom or bluetooth.

The empty port is a mini-pcie port. Can house anything with a mini pci-e port. GPS, bluetooth, wifi, TV tuner cards. Does NOT run SSDs unless they clearly state that they run on a mini pci-e port. Most try to trick you saying pci-e SSD because they have the same form factor and size, but they actually use another kind of port (that resembles mini PCI-e).

If nothing else works, I speculate that the empty slot contained the bluetooth card that was removed by someone.

I had an unknown device when I turned on my computer for about two minutes, but when I went to install it, it disappeared. I get the feeling its the bluetooth device. The hardware detection utility is nowhere near as sophisticated as the javascript on the intel site, but I tried using it. It listed the camera, chipset, wifi adapter, and lan. there's a message at the top that reads:

If you cannot find a bluetooth or 3g device listed below, but your computer does have these devices, please turn on these devices and press "Detect again"

could it be that the adapter is simply turned off? there arent any hardware switches to control bluetooth though, so I have no idea how to turn it on.

I did install the chipset driver.

Im having a little trouble working around the link you gave me. It seems that it is designed for Linux boxes because of all the tarballs I saw. Where are the Isos? If it helps, I have Cygwin64 terminal on my computer so I can run some linux commands already. I tried downloading the zip of version 6.1, but there isn't a file to launch it.

Nevermind I just found the bootable iso. Thank you ctrl+f. Ill update with the results in a few minutes

Update: I looked on the bootable about the computer configuration. I did not see the bluetooth adapter listed on the pcie list. Also, I did load a new version of windows onto the computer when I changed the hard drive.

Sorry for late answer, but I rely on email notifications, and editing a post does not send one.

Anyway, if not even HDT did detect it and there aren't hardware buttons for bluetooth (or fn key combinations) to activate it somehow, I'm kinda certain that the bluetooth device is dead or disconnected/removed.

So I just discovered the source of the issue! It turned out that without a hardware button to enable it, the bluetooth assumed that it should be off(or something like that). The launch manager (a program on Acer computers that handles other devices) detected the bluetooth device, but also left it disabled. It wasn't until I tried using the keyboard fn+f3 to turn off the wifi that I could finally find the menu to activate the bluetooth on the computer. Thanks again for the help.