Intel Ax210 Bluetooth issues

[BiotechBen]

Hey all, I've got an Intel ax210 in my system, and with any meaningful amount of uptime: it starts dropping out and fully disconnecting at random, often taking 5-10 minutes to sort itself out and start working again. This seems to be an issue that has been going on for 4-5 years at this point via r/Intel, with no fixes pushed yet. Have tried every driver revision I can get my hands on and it changes nothing at all. 

 

I know everyone likes shitting on Realtek, but I've never, not once, had connectivity issues with Realtek cards being the issue (windows piss poor management of Bluetooth devices memory has been the universal issue ime), and am considering swapping in an older, slower, Realtek card on the basis that it has yet to give me any headaches. Additionally, I've discovered that if Intel driver update assistant is ever running: my system gets pegged with utilization by it, and kills my frame rate to about 1/4-1/3 performance.

If you've got suggestions for permanent fixes, I'm all ears.

 

Device most affected:

Xbox Series Controller (1914)

(I know, filthy controller gamer. I grew up with couch gaming on console, it's what I prefer)

 

 

Relavent System specs:

R5 5600

Gtx 1080

ASRock B550 PG 4AC

T-CREATE 2x16 3600

Intel AX210 tri-band 

Seasonic gx-850 Gold 

W10

 

 

 

Irrelevant system specs:

Spoiler

-Inland premium 512gb gen3 x4

-WD Blue 2tb 5400

-Wraith stealth cooler 

-Various Be quiet! Silent/pure wings fans

-Dell D300 Case from my childhood basement PC I played so many educational games on (P2 300mhz, riva 128 32mb graphics)

LG Blu-ray drive

 

[y0ur5h4d0w]

3 hours ago, BiotechBen said:

This seems to be an issue that has been going on for 4-5 years

have you ever considered the fact that it might be an hardware issue and you could have it replaced long time ago? because if drivers doesn't fix anyhting then there's not much to do tbh

PS: i've seen realtek being shit talked too, i had more issues with intel cards personally, realtek never gave me a single issue

[Sawa Takahashi]

The easy way to test if your AX210 is working correctly is to test it in another computer. That way you eliminate software bugs and conflicts that may exist on your own computer.

You can also give it a try by using a Linux live usb stick to rule out Windows shenanigans. Any well known flavor of linux you can download currently should have native support for the AX210 (Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, etc.)

There is also a stupid fix that may work sometimes. Shut down your computer, remove the AX210 card (including the USB connector), boot your computer once without it. Shut down, reinstall the card and boot your computer again. For some reason, unplugging and replugging the card seems to fix some issues. Maybe it is a way to do a deep reset or something. I don't know why but it works when it works.

Good luck !

[FilipposTechGR]

9 hours ago, BiotechBen said:

Hey all, I've got an Intel ax210 in my system, and with any meaningful amount of uptime: it starts dropping out and fully disconnecting at random, often taking 5-10 minutes to sort itself out and start working again. This seems to be an issue that has been going on for 4-5 years at this point via r/Intel, with no fixes pushed yet. Have tried every driver revision I can get my hands on and it changes nothing at all. 

 

I know everyone likes shitting on Realtek, but I've never, not once, had connectivity issues with Realtek cards being the issue (windows piss poor management of Bluetooth devices memory has been the universal issue ime), and am considering swapping in an older, slower, Realtek card on the basis that it has yet to give me any headaches. Additionally, I've discovered that if Intel driver update assistant is ever running: my system gets pegged with utilization by it, and kills my frame rate to about 1/4-1/3 performance.

If you've got suggestions for permanent fixes, I'm all ears.

 

Device most affected:

Xbox Series Controller (1914)

(I know, filthy controller gamer. I grew up with couch gaming on console, it's what I prefer)

 

 

Relavent System specs:

R5 5600

Gtx 1080

ASRock B550 PG 4AC

T-CREATE 2x16 3600

Intel AX210 tri-band 

Seasonic gx-850 Gold 

W10

 

 

 

Irrelevant system specs:

  Hide contents

-Inland premium 512gb gen3 x4

-WD Blue 2tb 5400

-Wraith stealth cooler 

-Various Be quiet! Silent/pure wings fans

-Dell D300 Case from my childhood basement PC I played so many educational games on (P2 300mhz, riva 128 32mb graphics)

LG Blu-ray drive

 

Make sure you’re on the very latest drivers from Intel’s site, not just Windows Update. Sometimes even the older stable ones e.g. v22.200.2 behave better.

In Device Manager, Network adapter, Power Management, uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.

In advanced adapter settings, set Preferred Band to 5 GHz only, and disable 802.11ax if your router supports it forces WiFi 6E off, which can cause instability.

If you’re using Bluetooth devices, try disabling BT coexistence in the driver properties Intel’s BT/WiFi combo chip often causes conflicts.

Last resort: a cheap Realtek or Qualcomm PCIe/USB card can actually give you a more stable experience if reliability is more important than peak speed.

If none of the above helps, swapping to a Realtek or Qualcomm card might save you the headache long term.

[BiotechBen]

11 hours ago, y0ur5h4d0w said:

have you ever considered the fact that it might be an hardware issue and you could have it replaced long time ago? because if drivers doesn't fix anyhting then there's not much to do tbh

It only started being an issue about 2-3 months ago, and the RMA window is LONG gone. 

 

6 hours ago, Sawa Takahashi said:

There is also a stupid fix that may work sometimes. Shut down your computer, remove the AX210 card (including the USB connector), boot your computer once without it. Shut down, reinstall the card and boot your computer again. For some reason, unplugging and replugging the card seems to fix some issues. Maybe it is a way to do a deep reset or something. I don't know why but it works when it works.

Good luck !

I HAVE gotten that method to fix it for a few days at a time, it seems that helps with the BT Enumeration errors that occasionally get mass dumped

 

6 hours ago, FilipposTechGR said:

Make sure you’re on the very latest drivers from Intel’s site, not just Windows Update. Sometimes even the older stable ones e.g. v22.200.2 behave better.

In Device Manager, Network adapter, Power Management, uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.

In advanced adapter settings, set Preferred Band to 5 GHz only, and disable 802.11ax if your router supports it forces WiFi 6E off, which can cause instability.

If you’re using Bluetooth devices, try disabling BT coexistence in the driver properties Intel’s BT/WiFi combo chip often causes conflicts.

Last resort: a cheap Realtek or Qualcomm PCIe/USB card can actually give you a more stable experience if reliability is more important than peak speed.

If none of the above helps, swapping to a Realtek or Qualcomm card might save you the headache long term.

Have gotten the newest directly from the product page, and tried ones as far back as like 2023, oldest I could find securely. 

 

Only haven't swapped in the older Realtek card because it means opening up my previous laptop which is a pain due to the flush cut bottom bezels HP used.

[FilipposTechGR]

8 minutes ago, BiotechBen said:

It only started being an issue about 2-3 months ago, and the RMA window is LONG gone. 

 

I HAVE gotten that method to fix it for a few days at a time, it seems that helps with the BT Enumeration errors that occasionally get mass dumped

 

Have gotten the newest directly from the product page, and tried ones as far back as like 2023, oldest I could find securely. 

 

Only haven't swapped in the older Realtek card because it means opening up my previous laptop which is a pain due to the flush cut bottom bezels HP used.

If you’ve already tried the newest and even older drivers with no luck, then yeah, the card swap might be the cleanest long term fix. Even an external usb wifi realtek or qualcomm could be a quick workaround so you don’t have to open the laptop right away. 
 

[Sawa Takahashi]

8 minutes ago, BiotechBen said:

I HAVE gotten that method to fix it for a few days at a time, it seems that helps with the BT Enumeration errors that occasionally get mass dumped

JayZTwoCents released a video (about the infamous KB5063878) with a similar issue. His solution was to uninstall and deactivate BT if you are not using it. This makes sense but is not usefull if you need BT.

[BiotechBen]

4 hours ago, FilipposTechGR said:

If you’ve already tried the newest and even older drivers with no luck, then yeah, the card swap might be the cleanest long term fix. Even an external usb wifi realtek or qualcomm could be a quick workaround so you don’t have to open the laptop right away. 
 

Are there good Qualcomm cards with an M.2 interface? I've known them to only have integrated solutions.

 

Edit:

Found some Qualcomm Martini QCNFA765 for sale, appears to be the same as the one in my S22+ that has been flawless 

[FilipposTechGR]

Qualcomm’s laptop wifi cards are usually integrated solutions. For M.2 replacements you’ll more commonly see Intel AX200/AX210 or Realtek options. If you specifically want Qualcomm, you’re probably stuck with usb dongles rather than M.2 cards.

[BiotechBen]

After more searching:

THIS CARD seems to be an interesting probability for an outright replacement.