[SOLVED] Persistent bluetooth issues (cannot connect devices) across multiple USB dongles, peripherals, and OS upgrade.

[TravisM]

This has been very confusing to me. My son just got a new bluetooth keyboard and bluetooth USB dongle for his Windows 7 computer. We installed everything fine, but the keyboard would not properly pair - it appears in the list of devices when searching, but once added it greys out. Same thing with his bluetooth headphones that he normally uses with his phone. We plugged in the dongle and paired the keyboard with two other computers in the house without any problems.

So we bought a new dongle - an ASUS one rather than the unknown brand of the original dongle - and tried again. Same problem. Then we upgraded to Windows 10, and still have the same problem.

All devices can be seen during the pairing process, but once they computer registers the device it immediately greys out and can't be used. The device never finishes the connecting procedure on its end (e.g. the keyboard will continue to blink "connecting" no matter what happens).

All devices have been checked and work fine on two other computers - one windows 7 and one windows 10. All are desktops. We have tried USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports. We have uninstalled and reinstalled drivers.

Does anyone have any other thoughts what might be going on? I have hit my wits end with this one.

 

[Ralston18]

You might try the built in Windows 10 troubleshooters - they may find and fix something.

Also you can go into Task Manager > Services tab to check the Bluetooth services.

Click the Description column header to sort the column list alphabetically and all of the Bluetooth services should appear together.

Note the settings and compare them to their counterparts on the two computers where Bluetooth is working.

Try to start the services to determine if that makes a difference, then configure to start at boot up.

Another thing you can try is to use a USB extension cable to move the Bluetooth adapter up and away from the back of the case. May help if transmitting and receiving is being interfered with.

Are you seeing any pop-up messages that mention Miracast? For what it is worth I worked on one PC that absolutely refused to work with Bluetooth and kept telling me that Miracast was not supported. Issue was shelved when other problems developed.

I remember the troubleshooter fixing "radio services" or something like that. It has been awhile....

Watch and keep notes.

 

[TravisM]

Thank you for the input. I will try those out!

 

[TravisM]

Okay, well, we turned it on and it worked. No idea why. Didn't even have to follow any of those steps. We are very confused! But thank you for taking the time to respond to us, anyways! If it starts acting up again, I will try those steps.