The ideal solution to all Bluetooth problems is to follow the steps to properly uninstall the conflicting enumerator and then let the Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator take over.
Bluetooth Help and Troubleshooting Tips related to the Wireless Dynamics Sensor System (WDSS)
However, that doesn’t always work, the hardware manufacturer may not have designed their hardware with that in mind.
Note:The below instructions are only intended for a power user or IT staff. If you are not very comfortable with the underpinnings of Windows,it is probably best to get your IT staff involved to resolve this issue.
First some background:
The way that device identify themselves on USB is that companies sign up for a number called a Vendor ID or VID for short, (Vernier’s is 08F7,) and then within that vendor code the company assigns Product IDs or PID for short, (LabPro was our first USB device so it is 0001.) When the device is first connected to the computer, Windows asks the device for the hardware IDs, and then looks for a driver that supports those hardware IDs. Windows can look many places, including Windows Update and its collection of inf (setup Information) files. It will then know what driver to to use for that piece of hardware and load the appropriate driver for it. Loading the wrong driver for a device probably just won’t work, although it could make your computer unstable, and in theory, (but very unlikely in practice,) permanently break the device itself. It is like randomly making noises to someone that speaks a foreign language: by random chance you could say something, and by even more random chance what you say could be offensive, but most likely you won’t say anything intelligible at all. One common exception is that many Bluetooth radios share very similar hardware and can therefor use each other’s drivers.
There is a generic Bluetooth driver that ships with Windows, and this driver is only designed to work with the Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator. The trick is to force your Bluetooth radio to load that driver.
First you need to figure out the hardware IDs for your radio:
You can find this by going into the device manager and double clicking on the Bluetooth radio. Go to the details tab, and choose “Hardware Ids” from the dropdown. It will list something like “USBVid_04bf&Pid_0320&Rev_2652” (this is the Bluetooth radio we currently sell.) The VID in this example is 04bf, and the PID is 0320. Write those down.
Then you need to associate that hardware ID with the generic Bluetooth driver. The inf file that driver uses is C:Windowsinfbth.inf Open that file in you favorite plain text editor, (notepad is good,) and scroll down about 1/4 of the way until you see a bunch of lines listing different manufacturers/device names and VID PID combinations. Copy one of those lines, but change the device name, (the part before the equal sign) to something you’ll remember, and enter the VID PID from above. You don’t normally need the “Rev” (“Revision ID”). The header words in square brackets can be ignored, you don’t need to create your own, just put your device under one of them of your choosing. Save the file.
At this point you’ll need to do some or all of the following things, (in not necessarily this order):
1) Unplug the radio and plug it back in, (if it is built into the computer, try to turn the radio off then back on.)
2) Specify the driver for the device
3) Reboot
1&3 are fairly self explanatory, 2 is not: In the device manager, if the bluetooth radio doesn’t match what you set its name to be above, then right click on the bluetooth radio and choose “Update Driver”. (If you get a dialog that asks if you want to connect to Window Update, pick any answer, it doesn’t matter which one.) Choose “Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)” and then “Don’t search, I will choose the driver to install”. Then choose the name of what you set it to be up above.
Once you see the Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator in the device manager, start Logger Pro and try to connect to your WDSS. (It won’t always find it the first time, choose scan again…)
Note that this does not always work, sometimes you just need a different Bluetooth radio. In particular, it won’t work with version 3 and 4 Bluetooth radios that aren’t backwards compatible with older Bluetooth standards. These radios can sometimes be identified by words like “HS3” or “4LE” (which means “High Speed version 3” or “Low Energy version 4”) or other less than obvious terms.