I figured this out in the end, but I’m posting this in case anyone has a similar problem on the 16:
The bluetooth signal between my 16 and headphones randomly cut out, and the bluetooth button disappeared from the control menu, along with the settings page for bluetooth connections. Checking device manager, the bluetooth section had disappeared as well, and there was a new USB driver that had an error labelled “device descriptor check failed”.
Checked the forum, and found a similar issue on the 13 when people updated drivers or bios, and first tried to reinstall drivers, uninstalling the faulty USB one first, then restarting.
Then found that some people reported VPN conflicts with their bluetooth drivers, and uninstalled my VPN application. Repated the driver reinstallation process, still no luck.
Finally read someone’s suggestion to uninstall the faulty USB driver, reboot in bios, disconnect the battery from there, then restart. This fixed it.
While this did fix my issue, I did want to mention that this issue happened to me twice.
Wanted to add step by step instructions with pictures for me, since some parts of this were confusing to me (No fault to OP, I never heard of a Battery Disconnect from BIOS before)
Uninstall the Faulty USB Driver from Device Manager
The Device was labeled as “Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed)” for me.
Because of how the BIOS Battery Disconnect works, you won’t be able to restart without an external power source (doesn’t necessarily have to be AC power like the BIOS says, but that’s probably the easiest option)
This should resolve the issue, but I’ve also encountered this issue twice, so I have no idea if this is just a temporary fix that I’ll need to reapply every so often. This fix requires a reboot as well as external power, which means that I’m in trouble if it happens if I’m on the go.
Well, here’s to hoping that this doesn’t happen a 3rd time. Hope someone finds this helpful.
Thanks for the temp fix, I just started having this issue.
It is interesting that you mentioned VPN drivers. I have not had this problem for the past two weeks that I have had the latest drivers and BIOS installed but It did start a few hours after I had installed PIA vpn, although I have had OpenVPN and Wireguard installed from the start with no issues. For me the bug started shortly after I connected two devices at the same time to my laptop on windows 11. Both a Logitech mouse and Samsung earbuds.
Good to know I’m not the only one experiencing that issue, I already have a support ticket open with them about this and had it happen to me about 4 to 5 times now.
So far haven’t found a permanent solution, though your fix seems interesting, since I couldn’t figure out a reliable way to get it working again every time it happened.
The last thing I tried while waiting for the issue to reoccur was installing the bluetooth driver from windows updates which was the suggestion from framework support.
Just got this same issue. I got my FW about a month ago, no VPN software installed. @Michael-R how do you install the Bluetooth Driver from Windows updates?
Just to share an update on my issue it now has happened again, so just updating the drivers doesn’t permanently fix the problem unfortunately, I’ll keep in contact with framework support to see where this is going.
Btw it turns out a faster workaround is to perform a hard shutdown in windows by holding shift then pressing shut down, this seemed to have worked when I tried it.
I also have this same issue and am working with Framework Support, I will update if anything is found. Thanks for the hard shutdown tip, going to the BIOS is kind of annoying!
