I’ve had a problem with my Bluetooth on my Vista x64 laptop ever since I got it. Everything would work fine when the laptop first booted. However, when I suspended the laptop and subsequently resumed, non of my Bluetooth devices could connect to it. I was stumped. I tried updating my Bluetooth drivers, Windows patches and service packs. I’ve had the problem since RTM, with service pack 1 (SP1) applied, and the problem is still there with service pack 2 (SP2) applied.

I’ve seen a lot of people having similar issues. Unfortunately, all I can contribute is a workaround. That said, the workaround has worked well enough for me, but only because I do not typically need by Bluetooth devices all of the time. You’ll see when I mean soon.

The workaround is simple: after I resume the laptop from a suspended state, I disable and re-enable the Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator driver in the Vista Device Manager. The process takes about 1-2 minutes, so it would be quite a nucense to have to do it every time I resumed my laptop.

Here are detailed instructions on how to disable and re-enable the Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator driver:

  1. Click on the Vista Start button
  2. Right click Computer
  3. Select Manage
  4. Select Continue on the User Access Control (UAC) dialog box
  5. Select the Device Manager node from the tree view on the left
  6. Expand the Bluetooth Radios node from the devices tree node on the right
  7. Right click Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator
  8. Select Disable
  9. Select Yes on the confirmation dialog box
  10. Wait for the device to be disabled
  11. Right click Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator
  12. Select Enable

You should now be able to connect your Bluetooth devices to you Vista computer.

You can see this is quite an annoying process, but it has worked fairly consistently for me. I have Vista x64 Business Edition running on an HP Compaq 8710w Mobile Workstation with a Broadcom Bluetooth driver.