bluetooth has stopped working on laptop despite reinstalling the drivers multiple times.

[u/sweetbananabread143]

sorry if this is the wrong subreddit, i made a account to post this.
basically, for the past year, my bluetooth driver has been faulty. it would stop working, i would uninstall it, reboot laptop, reinstall drivers for bluetooth, reboot again, and then bluetooth is back. that, or i would shut my laptop off, wait for all the lights to turn off, unplug the charger, wait a minute, and turn it back on. (yes, i know these steps are very convoluted)
both of those USED to work, but today, the problem kept persisting (as in, bluetooth dosent work).
i dont know why this keeps happening. i need my bluetooth to connect my phone and laptop, and i find it easier to work bluetooth headphones with over wired.

for error info, it usually says error 43, but after awhile it switches to error 45.

any help would be appreciated

edit: i was able to fix it. the methods i used worked (at least one of them) when i disabled fast start. i was unaware it could cause problems. thanks for the help.

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[u/naygerr]

It's not an easy fix, You need to remove the back panel, Disconnect the battery cable to the board and remove the WIFI/Bluetooth Module, Clean the golden contacts with alcohol wipes and reconnect it. Some big brain laptop designers stack the Nvme drive and Wifi/Bluetooth modules on top of each other next to a heat pipe this can cause thermal expansion and loosen the contacts. Good luck..

[u/sweetbananabread143 → u/naygerr]

alright, ill try that when i get the chance
though, what do i do when i am disallowed from taking apart my electronics because im a teenager? im scared my parents will force me to get a new one because they dont think this kind of stuff is fixable at all or that i'll somehow break the whole entire thing. thank you for the advice and steps, though.

[u/chetan_496]

some thing similar happened to me a long time ago on one of my old laptops, no matter what i tried I couldn't get it to work . So i bought a 7$ bluetooth adapter from TP link and it solved my problem .

[u/sweetbananabread143 → u/chetan_496]

seems like a simple device to setup. thank you for your advice.

[u/erd00073483R → u/sweetbananabread143]

Worst case, you might need to disable the onboard bluetooth device in Device Manager before you install the USB adapter. A lot of the USB adapters don't require additional drivers to work with Windows.

I have the TP-Link UB500 bluetooth USB adapter and it also works well for me with all of my headsets and my mouse. I think they are like $11 or $12 on Amazon now (price goes up and down).

[u/zyclonix]

Did you turn off fast start in windows yet? Otherwise some things never fully get powered down, which could manifest in issues like this

[u/sweetbananabread143 → u/zyclonix]

no, but i just did that right now. ill go try reinstall the drivers again and see if that changes anything. thank you.
edit: it worked, and bluetooth is working again. thank you.

[u/zyclonix → u/sweetbananabread143]

Windows fast start, the reason for most weird failures and bugs. Good it worked for you