Bluetooth Issues Since Surface Updates - 5 August 2021

Sadly, I tried this last week when it first started occurring. Worked for a while and then the original problem began again.

I thought I would update here that I picked up a USB Bluetooth dongle to troubleshoot with that and it's been working fine the last couple of days. It's plug and play (Asus BT 5.0 USB BT500), just had to restart the first time. Both BT keyboard and mouse work with it no problems. I'll try connecting with headphones later. That said, sacrificing my only USB port to either a keyboard or alternate BT USB dongle is not a longterm solution It is clear though, whatever issue we're encountering, it is directly related to the windows firmware not being compatible with the Marvell drivers in particular. I do hope one of them issues a patch or update soon.

Many thanks GF. That is useful to know.

Well, it died (using the generic driver). But it died when I connected to my work network via VPN. Not sure if the generic driver doesn't play well with VPN's but this is when it happened.

No problem, Trevor. Now that I've verified it's Marvell specific, I'm troubleshooting in a more targeted manner. Came across this other thread https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/all/bluetooth-is-turned-off/351ed271-b0fc-4bdd-82ba-e8afb2624505?auth=1&page=2](https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/all/bluetooth-is-turned-off/351ed271-b0fc-4bdd-82ba-e8afb2624505?auth=1&page=2) and and am currently trying user [DavidDalton2's suggestion (see below):

It appears that I may have temporarily fixed the problem. It's been two days and running, with several reboots and many sleep/wake cycles. Hopefully this fix is good and will last until MS gets their act together and releases some good drivers. Again, my tablet is a Surface Pro 6, 21H1, OS Build 1943.1083, and Bluetooth is missing, so in my case, no pen or MS BT mouse. Steps to repair:

1. Go to device manager.
2. Uninstall Bluetooth>>Marvell AVASTAR Bluetooth Radio Adapter. When you uninstall it, delete the driver (an option on the Uninstall dialog box).
3. Uninstall Network adapters>>Bluetooth device. Delete the driver. This is the action that actually fixed it.
4. Reboot. W10 will reinstall both these devices with earlier drivers. In my case, the AVASTAR adapter is now at Version 15.68.9112.23, Date 12/02/2016. The Network adapter Bluetooth device is now at Version 10.0.1941.1, Date 6/21/2006.

If that fixes it, the next effort is to ensure that it remains fixed until MS releases good drivers, as the update process will constantly reinstall the latest level drivers on your behalf (we're Microsoft and we are here to help!) and it will fail again. If you have access to the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc), you can turn off driver updating. Run gpedit and go to Computer Configuration>>Administrative Templates>>Windows Components>>Windows Update>>Do not include drivers with Windows Updates, Open it and push the Enable button. Done.

However, if you are running W10 Home, gpedit is not normally available. I understand that you can still get to it by installing the Policy Plus application. I run Policy Plus on my W10 Pro devices so can't verify for sure whether it will actually run on Home, but that's what they say. It is more robust than gpedit, allowing the user to filter the display, so I often use it instead of gpedit.

*Now you have to research the driver updates as they are released to determine whether they will permanently fix the problem and if so install them manually.*So I've somewhat followed the directions above and my Bluetooth radio adapter driver is now rolled back to the same as above with same date as well (as we've all done multiple times already lol). I did not bother uninstalling the network adapter device as it currently matches the version and date above). I did, however, run gpedit and turned off driver updating in Windows updates. Things have been running smoothly since my last post, so about an hour or so which is the longest it's lasted the last couple weeks. Fingers crossed it continues, I will report back either way.

Yeah, I tried that solution last week early on, I don't connect to any VPNs and it still stopped working for me as well. I am currently using the solution I last posted about (likely right above this post). Perhaps you can try it and see if it works for you?