Dell latitude D800 Bluetooth not detected

You know, this wasn't a problem until recently.  We have a series of D600 machines that are doing the same thing.. there is a blue light (that indicates blue tooth, clever huh?).  Wireless and blue tooth use the same radio.  The only thing that makes blue tooth different, is the protocol.  It communicates on a level, but it still utilizes the same radio frequency.  I have a D600, with no problem, and I am able to use blue tooth, which got me to thinking.. maybe the blue tooth radio gets tired, or just gives up on connecting to a device..

 

So I have been experimenting doing mock communications, even if you don't use a blue tooth device, if you setup a device, that seems to make the blue tooth radio happy.  As far as how you know its installed, the bios should indicate if its installed, the blue light tells you its activated, and the driver on the tray system notification area, tells you the driver is ready to send/receive.  Other than that, there isn't a full proof way to indicate if its working other than to simply try it.

 

If you don't need it, you can't simply disable it from the tray icon (you can, but sometimes when you re-enable it, it won't work).  You have to go into device manager, and click blue tooth devices, and disable the Dell True Mobile Blue Tooth driver, that's the only way so far that I have found.

 

The problem we are having is there is an unknown device that pops up every so often.. and it has to be the blue tooth.  I am working on this everyday.. trying to figure it out, but its driving me crazy.. even resorting to calling Dell and asking them for a way to just disconnect the blue tooth all together, but its not easily accessible....