Fix Bluetooth problems in Windows

Question

hello my bluetooth is not working. It shows it but no devices are connecting

Answer 1

Hi Colin Muehl

Welcome to Microsoft Community.

Based on your description, I understand that your Bluetooth is not working properly and no device is connected although it is showing. I understand very well how you feel!

Here are some common possible causes of the problem.

1. The Bluetooth support service in the Windows background may have been disabled or turned off accidentally.
2. Drivers are outdated, corrupted or have poor compatibility.
3. The laptop may have a physical Bluetooth switch, or the shortcut to turn off Bluetooth (e.g. Fn+F5) may have been touched by mistake.
4. Errors in the information of the paired device prevent it from reconnecting.

And so on.

I will give you some suggestions and options to hopefully solve your problem or find out what is causing it! However, as this is a first reply with little information and the problem needs to be investigated in different ways, please understand and provide more information (pictures would be great!) in your reply. Thank you very much!

Option 1: We ensure that the Bluetooth-related services are operational.

Press “Win+R” and type “services.msc” to enter.

Find “Bluetooth Support Service”, right click and select “Restart”.

On the same page, check the “Bluetooth Audio Gateway Service” and “Bluetooth User Support Service” to make sure they are both started “automatically”.

Option 2: Since I don't know if you have a laptop or desktop computer.

If you are a laptop, we need to be aware of the physical switch.

So let's manually check the physical switches and system settings.

Physical Switch: Check if there is a Bluetooth switch on the side or top of the laptop, or try a shortcut key (e.g. Fn + Airplane Mode icon key).

System switch: Click Notification Center in the bottom right corner of the taskbar -> Make sure the “Bluetooth icon” is enabled in blue (not gray).

Option 3: We tried to update, manually install the Bluetooth driver.

1. Update driver

“WIN + x” select ‘Device Manager’ -> find your corresponding device -> right-click on the device and select ‘Update Driver’ -> ‘Automatically search for updated driver’.

2. Install generic driver

Also in Device Manager -> Right-click on the device and select “Remove Device” (if there is one, please make sure “Remove Driver” is checked) -> After restarting the computer, the system will automatically search for and install the universal driver.

3. Manual driver installation

The driver involves the following situations:

(1) If you are a laptop, you can download the driver for the corresponding laptop model through the brand's official website.

(2) If you have a desktop computer, you can download the driver for the corresponding model through the official website of the motherboard brand.

(3) You can also download the driver for the corresponding model through the hardware/device manufacturer's website.

Please note: Please try the latest version of the driver as a priority, assuming the problem still exists, we can try some known older and more compatible versions.

Option 4: There is a special case we need to pay attention to, if you have installed driver A, but after restarting the computer it becomes driver B.

It is possible that the system automatically searches for and updates or replaces the driver after restarting the computer, causing the problem.

In this case, you can prevent the system from updating or replacing the driver by using the program I wrote to prevent this situation from happening again and again.

Prevent Windows from updating drivers automatically:

1: Right-click “This PC” on desktop -> “Properties” -> Click “Advanced System Settings” -> Select “Hardware” in the upper tab -> “Device Installation Settings” -> Modify it to “No, let me choose the action to be performed” (If there is one, please check the box of “Never install driver software from Windows Update”) -> Save the changes.

2: “Windows Logo Key + i” to open Settings -> Find “Windows Update” on the left sidebar -> “Advanced options” -> Make sure “Receive updates for other Microsoft products” is not enabled.

3: Click “Windows Logo Key” to open the search bar -> Type “Services” and open it -> Scroll down to find “Windows Update” -> Change “Startup type” to “Disable” -> “Apply” & “OK”

4: Modify the registry.

Click “Windows Logo Key” to open the search bar -> Type “regedit” and open it with administrator privileges.

Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching” path -> On the right side, find “SearchOrderConfig” and change the value to 0 -> Restart your computer to finish the modification.

0 = Block driver updates

1 = Allow to download driver update

Please note: Please continue to backup your system before modifying the registry to avoid other problems.

Option 5: If you are having trouble pairing a particular device, we can try deleting the old device and re-pairing it.

However, in this case we are not deleting the old connected device from the device list in the settings, as the old configuration file and registry may be left behind and the problem may still exist.

You can delete the configuration file and registry of the old device in the way I wrote, and then re-pair it.

1. Windows saves the data of paired devices in the registry, even if the devices have been uninstalled or deleted, the pairing information may still exist, you can try the following steps to manually delete these caches.

(1) Open “Run” with “WIN + R”, type “regedit” and open the following program

(2) Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BTHPORT\Parameters\Devices”.

(3) In the Devices folder, right-click and delete all entries related to the headset.

Please note: All paired Bluetooth devices are listed here.

(4) Reboot your computer for this to take effect.

Please note: I recommend that you backup your registry before deleting to avoid deleting entries by mistake or causing other problems.

2. After restarting the computer, we first go back to the registry to check if the entries have been deleted successfully.

Then go to “Device Manager” and check if the related devices under “Bluetooth and Other Devices” have been deleted.

If the device still exists, we can perform the delete device operation again in Device Manager and then restart the computer to take effect.

3. We can also clear the pairing record via the command line.

Click “Windows Logo Key” to open the search bar -> Type “Windows PowerShell” in the search bar and open it with administrator privileges -> Please enter the following commands

(1) Enter the following command to list the paired devices,

Get-PnpDevice -Class Bluetooth

(2) Find the device associated with the headset and uninstall it using the following command.

Remove-PnpDevice -InstanceId "Device Instance ID"

Restart the computer and then try to reconnect the device.

Option 6: Let's try to run the built-in Bluetooth Troubleshooter.

Open Settings with “WIN + i” -> select “System” on the left sidebar -> “Troubleshoot” -> “Other troubleshooters” -> click “Run” to the right of “Bluetooth”.

Option 7: If you have recently received an update push, we can try updating the system.

Some system update patches may contain fixes.

Open Settings with “WIN + i” -> select “Windows Update” on the left sidebar -> “Check for updates”.

I sincerely hope that the above information and programs will help you! Please feel free to contact me (Photos related to the question would be great!).

I look forward to hearing back from you. 

Best Regards

Arthur Sheng | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Answer 2

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