I recently bought a Inspiron 9400 Royal with Windows Vista including the Wireless
355 Bluetooth 2.0-Module. But since some of my applications don't run on Vista, I
had to "downgrade" to Windows XP Prof.
However I was not able to make the Bluetooth module work. I downloaded the relevant
device driver (R127314.EXE), but the setup program is waiting forever for the
Bluetooth device to come up.
The device structure in DevMgr looks like this:
Intel USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 27CC
+ USB Root-Hub
..+ Standard USB-Hub *)
....+ USB HID
....+ USB HID
The device marked *) is named BCM2045B2 on the General tab, and is really the 355
module, I think. But its PnPID is USB\VID_0A5C&PID_4500, which isn't covered by the
provided device driver.
It looks to me there is a new revision of the 355 Bluetooth module shipping, but
the device driver hasn't been updated now.
Well, in the first try I had the same behaviour on Vista - the Bluetooth
adapter was still not found.
But I found a solution for reactivating the 355 Bluetooth adapter somewhere
else, which works for me:
1) Disable Bluetooth in BIOS and boot Vista
2) Download the current driver (eg. R140135.exe)
3) Extract the downloaded file (cancel install when asked for Fn+F2)
4) Instead install the Bluetooth software by running Inst.exe
5) Power off the NB when asked for Fn+F2 (don't cancel)
6) Enable Bluetooth in BIOS and boot Vista
7) Right-Click the Bluetooth icon in taskbar and (re)enable hardware
Peter, I had windows vista on the Inspiron 9400 and now i formated the hard drive and installed the windows xp. I wasn't aware of this problem that it will occur in windows xp. now i am trying to enable the bluetooth in windows xp and its not working for me. i already downloaded the drivers from the dell website but its keep on asking to enable the blue tooth with the FN+F2 key. its not working. let me know how do i solve this problem. Thanks
It won't work with Windows XP. You need Windows Vista to re-enable the device.
I had to take a harddrive image using Acronis TrueImage, installed Vista, took
the steps above to enable the Bluetooth module and restored the harddrive image.
I tried to find some information what configuration flag in hardware was set when
the device was disabled (in the hope to re-enable it eg. on Linux), but no luck.
sdinesh
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Posted April 18th, 2007 14:00