Bluetooth present but does not operate on Realtek RTL8188CEB8 on Pavilion g7-2275dx

[BradTem]

My G7 did not support bluetooth so I got the Realtek half mini-pci bgn/bluetooth card and installed it.   I installed the drivers from the Realtek web site for Windows 8.

The adapter works for wifi just fine, and in the device manager, the Generic Bluetooth adapter appears under bluetooth, and under network adapters it shows the Realtek PCIe Familyh controller and the Realtek RTL8188ce bgn controller.  In the past it has shown 2 other bluetooth devices (now it shows a failure on the generic adapter) but no matter what, there is no switch in the network control panels to turn bluetooth on, and attempts to do bluetooth all fail -- the device can't be discovered, nor can it discover others.

Any thoughts on how to get BT running on this system under Windows 8?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Wow...I am surprised you could install a non supported wlan card in your model.

Normally the bios locks out any card not listed as supported in the service manual.

Unfortunately, you picked a wrong model combo wireless/BT card to run in W8, because the BT 3.0 radio on that card is not W8 capable.

You will not find any W8 drivers for it.

I recommend you get the supported Ralink combo Wireless/BT card that is listed in chapter 3 of the service manual for your notebook.

Or, if you have a copy of W7, make your set of W8 recovery disks, install W7, and you will be able to use the Realtek card you installed.

If you choose the latter of the two options, let me know and I will post the links to the W7 x64 drivers you need for your model, as HP does not officially support it for W7.

[BradTem]

That's odd because I saw the Realtek listed in an HP manual for the g7, and realtek has windows 8 drivers on its web site. And as noted the wifi works great, though the card does not have abgn as somebody told me it did. Is there an abgn plus bluetooth card that works or is only bgn possible on this laptop. I will dig through the manual to see if I can find the model number of Ralink you refer to.

Funny thing is that the driver was able to see the MAC address of the bluetooth -- but not more than that.

BTW, does it have to be the RT3290LE or will any of the RT3290 chips that have the HP spare part number 690020-00?   The LE parts seem to be mostly in China with long lead times.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

You are probably looking at the wrong service manual.

Click on the link below and then click on the User Guides tab link for your specific model.

Then select the maintenance and service guide. You will find in chapter 3 (page 19), the list of supported wireless cards and part numbers.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?product=5336991&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&task=

I am still amazed your notebook booted up with that card in it. 

Unfortunately, no matter what you try, the BT will not work with W8.

I have even given folks the W7 drivers to try, and they don't work.

Here they are if you want to give them a shot.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=0&...

There are no supported dual band cards for your model.

Now, speaking of unsupported cards, somone on this forum installed an Intel 6235 on an unsupported amd model.  Not to say it would work on yours too but this is a very rare thing.

The Intel 6235 is a dual band card w/BT, and would work with W8.

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/product-briefs/centrino-advanced-n-wimax...

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Hardware-Upgrades-Replacements/Intel-Centrino-Advanced-N-6235-success-o...

[BradTem]

Thanks.   Surprised to see that support is so limited.    This is a rare windows machine for me.  In the linux world you can usually put in any card that has a driver.

But the g7 does not complain at all -- and in fact I am writing this to you over the wifi in that card.   I am not sure why the bios would want to reject such cards, but the realtek is on some lists for the g7, which is why I got it.    The card was only $7 so no big deal.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

You're very welcome.