Im using a HP Elitebook 8470p and recently bought a new WiFi card, the Intel AC 7260. The card also has Bluetooth included, which I figured to be nice, it could succede the laptop's original Bluetooth card BCM20702 (which is a separate card, mind you) as I was not particularly happy with it.
Upon installation of the AC 7260 I also disconnected the BCM20702, in order to avoid having two Bluetooth devices. The WiFi worked out of the box, on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 14.04 (both 64bit). The Bluetooth, however, did not even exist as a device, regardless have often, in what order or what version of drivers I installed.
My question: Is it even possible to get it to work? Since the motherboard is "wired" to "expect" the Bluetooth device to be on a totally diffrent connector.
66 Answers
Some Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo modules put the Bluetooth radio on USB or UART serial instead of PCIe (as I understand it, there are extra pins on an internal PCIe x1 connector that can be used for non-PCIe purposes such as USB). The AC 7260 spec docs seem to mention that it uses both PCIe and USB, so the Bluetooth functionality may be what it needs USB for. It's possible that your laptop's internal PCIe slot (where the previous Wi-Fi card was installed) does not have the "USB pins" of the PCIe slot connector actually hooked up to a USB host chip, so it's possible that your slot doesn't provide the USB connectivity that your AC 7260's Bluetooth functionality requires.
4I had the same problem just one week before as I tried to replace the 2.4 GHz only 7260n WiFi card on my Thinkpad x240, which originally support Bluetooth. I bought a 7260ac card from taobao.com and the lable on it is a little different than the normal 7260ac card. After I installed the card on the board and restarted, the 5 GHz WiFi worked like a charm. But the Bluetooth disappeared and can't be found in the device manager. I installed the latest Bluetooth device driver of Intel, tried the little Bluetooth on/off trick from the Lenovo engineer, and even reinstalled the windows 10 system. None of them worked.
I told the seller about the situation and they felt very wired too. Afterward they sent a new card to me which the label is same as the normal Lenovo 7260ac card. After I replaced the new card, the Bluetooth came back immediately. I wasted three days time to dealt with the Bluetooth function, which turned out it was just a wrong card.
So the conclusion is very simple, not every card is born equal. Just ask your seller replace a new card until it worked. If it still doens't work, replace a seller.
These are used commonly on a lot of Dell and HP equipment and often give grief, I found that making sure the most upto date driver is the first step and can save a lot of time
Make sure you get the correct one for the OS installed also this driver pack installs the wifi and the BT separately if I remember right and sometimes asks for authorisation to do BT install, so be sure that you give admin rights and agree to the install
all in all this is a good card and works well, but it does have known hardware mismatches issues
Mine is a HP DV6 7000 series and after I upgraded my wireless/bt card to AC 7260, my bluetooth also disappeared. But I somehow managed to make it work. I don't know exactly what fixed it but here's what I did:
- I removed old drivers (Broadcom)
- I re-installed the driver for AC 7260 from Intel's website (I previously downloaded the driver from HP's)
- I installed the Bluetooth driver from Intel's website as well (wireless card and bt drivers are separate)
- Turn wifi off and on again (F12)
Then my Bluetooth's back. I paired it with my bt headset with no problem.
UPDATES: Later I found my bluetooth would disappear again everytime I reboot my computer, and it would reappear if I toggle wifi on and off. Then several weeks later I happened to update BIOS to a newer version and after reboot the bluetooth stayed working. So I guess you could try updating your BIOS.
I had this problem with my Intel AC 3160, upgrading from a broadcom card on a samsung laptop. the wifi works just fine but the bluetooth is not detected at all. After some googling I found a video on youtube that suggested putting a piece of tape on one pin (the last pin on the right side), it seemed weird but it worked. Hope it helps check the video
Well I tried an N 7260 on a 7 year old toshiba laptop, BT did not even register, wifi dual band was ok, had BT drivers for it but system could not find any bluetooth device. So tried Atheros QCA9377 card instead, which is better I think, that worked straight away no problems with windows 10, did not even have to install drivers for it wifi dual band and bluetooth worked. So I guess it's just a hardware compatibility issue as I suspected. Suggest you try another card. Find out what pins do what and can your machine accomodate this.
