Possible Bluetooth Disabled at Factory

[EndoNova]

Hi, I recently purchased a used HP Revolve 810 G3 from Ebay, and have now learned that my bluetooth doesn't work.  I went through the usual steps with drivers and no luck.  I looked into the BIOS and I don't even have the Bluetooth toggle option at all. 

Reading online I discovered that there is an option when purchasing from HP to have the bluetooth permanently disabled from the factory.  I suspect this is what happened to the one that I purchased from Ebay.  

Is there anything I can do to restore this?  Would buying a new m.2 module fix this, or is it a deeper bios setting that cannot be changed?  

[REO51ST]

Welcome to the HP Support Community @EndoNova 

Most Bluetooth options are a Combo Card with the WiFi.

What is the model of your WiFi adaptor???

REO

[EndoNova]

It is a combo card.  Intel 7265.  And No, Bluetooth doesn't show in Device Manager either.  

[REO51ST]

@EndoNova 

I see 3 driver updates that may help???

Intel Chipset Installation Utility:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/swdetails/hp-elitebook-revolve-810-g3-tablet/742924...

Intel Bluetooth Driver (Windows 10):

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/swdetails/hp-elitebook-revolve-810-g3-tablet/742924...

REBOOT:

HP Notebook System BIOS Update:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/swdetails/hp-elitebook-revolve-810-g3-tablet/742924...

REBOOT:

REO

[EndoNova]

I did all 3 of those updates already.  Drivers and updaging the BIOS was the first thing I thought of, too.  Below is from the wifi card manual and is what I suspect is going on.  Seems like this is an option when purchasing a laptop from the factory.  Can this be undone?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, @EndoNova 

Is the bluetooth device present and enabled in the BIOS?

If so, the most likely problem is the notebook once had W7 on it (W10 Pro with downgrade rights to W7 Pro), and it also had the HP connnection manager software installed at the time the notebook was upgraded to Windows 10, and the bluetooth was turned off using the connection manager software.  The HP connection manager software does not work in W10.

The only suggestion I can offer would be to see if this works...

Make a bootable Ubuntu installer, select the 'Try Ubuntu without installing option,' and see if you can turn on the Bluetooth in Ubuntu.

https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

If you can turn it on in Ubuntu, then once you get back into Windows, the BT radio should be enabled.

[EndoNova]

There is no Bluetooth box where it should be in the bios at all. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

I don't know of any Elitebooks that didn't come standard with bluetooth, and what HP does when they don't want a notebook to have bluetooth, is that they install a card that is not a combination wifi/bluetooth adapter.  They would not disable BT at the factory, so that no one could turn it on.

IMO, the BT portion of the Intel 7265 wifi card is not working.

But if you have not tried my suggestion, you may want to give it a try regardless of whether the BIOS shows the presence of a BT adapter or not.

You can probably pick up a used but tested and working 7265 card on ebay for very little money.

[EndoNova]

Hi, I have seen reference online to an option (at the cost of $1.00) to have bluetooth permamently disabled at the factory.  Unfortuntely I'm at work so can't pull up those particular forums for referrence (I believe they were actually archived HP forums).  I did purchase a replacement card, so we will test that, although I don't have high hopes :(.  My girlfriend has the exact same Revolve 810, but was unable to use it to swap the cards, but maybe she'll let me do it today!  

Actually, I was able to quickly find one of the threads that I found yesterday while researching.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/HP-Elitebook-Revolve-810-G3-bl...

Also, I will try the linux thing just for the heck of it, but if there is no referrence to it in the BIOS, I'm not sure if that is the culprit.  

[EndoNova]

Well I tried to use unbuntu and got this:

So no luck there 😞