Bluetooth Issues Since Surface Updates - 5 August 2021

Hi SamLim1, welcome to our Windows Update Support Group lol. Many of us have been dealing with this for the last couple weeks as you can see from this thread being 7 pages deep. That said, so far for myself, I have found 2 solutions if you're in dire need (which it sounds like you are).

1. An external USB Bluetooth dongle should get your pen up and running as it appears to be a conflict between the recent windows update and Marvell's bluetooth adapter driver. I tested the ASUS Bluetooth USB-BT500 and it worked great. That said, it also set me back $30 CDN and uses the solitary usb port available, so obviously not a long term solution. Mostly, it just solidly verified the issue lay with the marvell driver.
2. You can try rolling back the driver and disabling driver updates to keep it at its rolled back status. I found this solution on another thread in this forum and so far it is working and has kept me operational the longest in the last 2 weeks (other than switching to the USB BT adapter). You'll need to uninstall the Marvell Bluetooth Adapter in your Device Manager (be sure to check uninstall drivers as well) and then restart. When you restart, you will need to access your Group Policy Editor and enable Do not include drivers with Windows Update to prevent windows from auto-updating the drivers you just rolled back. If you scroll back a page or two, you should be able to view more detailed instructions on how to do this all.

Ymmv, but hopefully that gets you up and running long enough to get some work done!

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.

Surface Pro 6 update to my earlier post - - based on what some others discovered in this thread, I disconnected and unpaired my speakers and just ran with the Bluetooth mouse on the latest Marvell bluetooth driver (ending in .121). 6 hours and counting, which is about 5 hours and 15+ minutes longer than bluetooth had been running before it dumped both the speakers and the mouse. I'm no expert, but my personal experience shows tells me that latest driver breaks bluetooth if you have an audio device connected.

Just a quick update, further to my post yesterday, I find that when my phone is close to the Surface and well within BT range, the BT issue is pretty constant. If I leave the phone well away from the Surface, I don't experience the problem, If I move it a little closer, the BT connection (particularly to my mouse) comes and goes, but doesn't switch off. So, you may be right, Thomas, that it is something to do with the number or type of BT devices connected/trying to connect.

I would really like to hear from Microsoft (MS). I haven't heard from anyone, apart from those affected, for about a week. There are obviously many people experiencing this issue with various Surface models since the Firmware Update on c. 5 August 2021. It would be very good if MS would acknowledge the issue, reassure us that a fix is being worked on and give a timescale when it is to be resolved, as this is having a very detrimental effect on my, and I'm sure others' efficiency and productivity.

I have the same problem on my surface 6, latest win 10 Version with the Marvell AVASTAR Bluetooth Radio Adapter. After a reboot all BT devices are working properliy and then all connections are lost, the BT symbol is gone as well a s the switch. The driverversion is 15.68.17021.121

I looked up the event manager and found an error with

ID 411:

Beim Start des Geräts USB\VID_1286&PID_204C\0000000000000000 ist ein Problem aufgetreten.

Treibername: oem22.inf

Klassen-GUID: {e0cbf06c-cd8b-4647-bb8a-263b43f0f974}

Dienst: BTHUSB

Untere Filter: 

Obere Filter: 

Problem: 0x15

Problemstatus: 0x0

The source is kernel-PnP

I tried all the basic stuff like reinstalling the device driver, de- and activating the device, rebooting, installing from the surface firmware package. Nothing seems to fix this permanently.

I got the same problem on my desktop pc. after in removed the update KB5003537 (which was not on my surface) bluetooth seems to be stable after hours of music streaming.

I'd really appreciate a fix from the annoying connection breakdowns since my surface is my machine to work with :)