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79901
May 8th, 2011 02:00
Solution for XPS m2010 bluetooth problems after upgrading to 64-bit Windows 7
A couple of weeks ago I upgraded my XPS M2010 to 64-bit Windows 7 Professional, and then realized that Dell has not posted updated drivers for Windows 7. Since I had loaded a fresh install of Windows 7, the recovery partition could no longer be accessed to re-install Vista. So I decided to move forward. After a few days of research on the internet, I managed to find out which drivers would work of audio, the webcam, the graphics card, etc. I got everything working except the bluetooth module.
I researched the internet for a solution for more than a week, and tried the suggestions that seemed to work at least part of the time for other people. These included a couple of the driver packages from Dell and a Toshiba bluetooth stack. None of these worked. Although the bluetooth driver seemed to work for the bluetooth mini card, the keyboard and mouse would not connect.
I finally found a suggestion to use a bluetooth USB micro adapter. So I did more research on the various brands available. People seemed to have problems with many of them. On Amazon.com, I did more research and checked feedback on different products. I came across the IOGear USB Micro Adapter, Model GBU421 that had reasonably good feedback. So I checked the IOGear web site and downloaded the most current drivers. I ordered the IOGear adapter which was about $12. The adapter is so tiny it can be left in the USB port without getting in the way.
This adapter works beautifully and was well worth the cost for the time I had wasted trying to get the installed Dell adapter to work. If you decide to get this adapter, make sure you download the current drivers. The adapter comes with a mini disk that won't work with a slot load drive.
i hope this helps others that haven't been able to get the keyboard and mouse working after upgrading to Windows 7.
Dont Knowler
13 Posts
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January 25th, 2012 12:00
Hi Judy, does your external bluetooth adapter also give you keyboard functionality in BIOS? Thanks.
Crainphoto
3 Posts
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April 8th, 2012 22:00
I have been fighting this same battle.
My scenario is slightly different in that after the win7 64 installation my keyboard worked, even though the bluetooth didn't show up in the device manager (or any where else). Baffling.
The keyboard did, however, have performance issues as compared to XP. It would go to sleep after only of few minutes of inactivity and take several seconds of track pad use or several key strokes to become active again. It also did have intermittent periods where it would fail to connect w/o the cold boot pairing technique in the manual. This got gradually worse after a few months and eventually would inexplicably just fail to connect at all for a week or more at a time.
I finally ordered a new keyboard battery and ran into a new problem.
It had difficulty pairing and then after a few hours it failed to connect at all. I tried all of the usual methods and a few new ones including a failed attempt at a miss matched OS firmware update.
After the aborted firmware update something new happened. I got a bluetooth icon in the systray and Bluetooth Radios bullet in the device manager.
I was still getting just blinking lights and no pairing on the computer and on keyboard.
But after playing around with the systray Icon I discovered that a double click would open a Bluetooth Devices window and that if I had the blinking light on the keyboard it would show up in the window. A right click on the keyboard Icon yielded an old fashioned software pairing option with a code to type on the keyboard.
It worked the first time. It's held the connection through several reboots and a few hours of use now. I am very pleased.
I am still planning on getting one of the USB adapters as a back up, but so far so good.
Dont Knowler
13 Posts
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April 8th, 2012 23:00
Hi Crainphoto! Thanks for the story. When you wrote that in the beginning your keyboard worked - does it mean that it was also functioning before OS had loaded - for example in BIOS? And - does it work in BIOS / before OS is loaded now?
Dont Knowler
13 Posts
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April 9th, 2012 00:00
Hi Crainphoto, thanks for the reply. The strange thing is that when I bought this Dell it had Vista on it, and the keyboard did definitely work in the BIOS - I can remember this quite well. And then, even without OS change, this functionality just disappeared somehow. After that I could find no way to restore it - no OS reinstall, no OS change (to XP, to Win7), and no toying with drivers in any combinations could help. However the blue Bluetooth tray icon always worked fine, so communicating with the keyboard inside an OS have never been a problem. Well, this Dell seems to be full of mysteries - I wonder if its creators, Dell engineers, know the answer, for when I attacked them with questions they failed to help ;-)
Crainphoto
3 Posts
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April 9th, 2012 00:00
Dont Knowler,
No it doesn't work in the BIOS now and I don[t think it did before either. But definitely did in XP.
Not sure why an OS change would effect the BIOS functionality, but it does.
Crainphoto
3 Posts
0
April 9th, 2012 02:00
Dont Knowler,
I am afraid that we will always need to have a USB keyboard for back up and maintenance with this machine.
I'm not sure what the original OS was on mine. When I got it, it was running 2 160GBs in a RAID 0, and the raid had failed due to bad sectors.
I did clean install of XP on a single drive, I remember being very surprised that the keyboard worked for that.
I've done 2 win7 64 installs since then, second time onto an ssd. That's just since last summer. This computer has been a bit of an adventure.
Good luck