Bluetooth divers?

[mmace]

I bought a "micro" Bluetooth 2.0 EDR USB dongle from eBay to go on my XP SP2 machine but it's asking for drivers, there was nothing that came with the dongle (was in sealed packaging so I assume there wasn't meant to be a disc, works fine with Vista with no drivers). I've tried the latest drivers from Broadcom too.

There's no make or model for it, but it looks exactly like this:
http://www.hotukdeals.com/images/deals/151510.jpg

[mmace]

this is what I bought:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=280209801649&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=018

[PhilEnfield]

Sounds a bit weird ..... have you tried it on another XP/SP2 box, just in case it's peculiar to your machine ?

[mmace]

i don't have another one, may set up a VM to try it

[PhilEnfield]

Yeah that may help.

I take it you've already checked the USB Controllers in Device Mangler, to confirm USB2 or Enhanced exists.

[mmace]

yeah.
not had problems with any other USB devices before either and have 3 bluetooth 2.0 dongles!

[Van Nugent]

XP up to SP2 does not "natively" support bluetooth. (Even pre-SP3 doesn't either but I hope the final SP3 will.)

Try BlueSoleil (http://www.bluesoleil.com/) as this software supports many different bluetooth chipsets. Google for a free download to try it. :)

Moving to Drivers.

[PhilEnfield]

XP up to SP2 does not "natively" support bluetooth. (Even pre-SP3 doesn't either but I hope the final SP3 will.)

Try BlueSoleil (http://www.bluesoleil.com/) as this software supports many different bluetooth chipsets. Google for a free download to try it. :)

Moving to Drivers.
That's interesting to know Van .... I have just plugged mine in to XP Pro SP2 and it has always worked without drivers ...... perhaps I have been lucky.

[Van Nugent]

Yep, XP has very limited supports for bluetooth as of this time just like the old Win98 and USB 1.1. That means there are lots of bluetooth adapters that will not work in XP right out of the box without their own drivers. On the other hand, Vista fully supports bluetooth so we can run virtually all bluetooth adapters without the needs for the drivers.

[mmace]

cheers guys, downloaded BlueSoleil and it works fine now (didn't know there was a drivers section to the site!)

[Ogs]

Mine uses BlueSoleil and its crap - cuts out all the time.

[Van Nugent]

Mine uses BlueSoleil and its crap - cuts out all the time.I once had similar problem with my USB wireless network adapter. The connection experienced a lot of drop-out's and that drove me crazy, even after I disabled "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" in Power Management. I tried all driver versions for the dongle that I could get and did all tweaking that I could think of but the dam n thing still got cut off after 10 or 15mins of use. It took me about half a day to realize that the on-board USB controller, which is an nVIDIA nForce controller BTW, didn't like the dongle. I then used an add-in NEC PCI USB 2.0 controller and the problem disappeared. Just FYI because your problem may not be the same.

[Ogs]

Got a different PC now, might retry, cheers.

:tup: