Solved All trace of bluetooth gone

Many thanks to Bruce for helping me get my Toshiba L70-C-12H going again, after what was apparently a hard disk failure. See recent thread: "Win 10 won't start on Toshiba Satellite L70C-12H - "Preparing Automatic Repair""

The machine now flies along not having any software on it yet beyond Chrome, but this evening I went to use it with my Bluetooth headphones and discovered that nearly all reference to Bluetooth has disappeared. The notification area has all the usual boxes, Flight Mode, Wi-fi etc, but no Bluetooth - and yes, I did click "Expand". In the "Bluetooth and other devices" page in Settings, the little switch to turn Bluetooth on is missing. In Device Manager itself, the entry for a Bluetooth device is no longer listed.

I plugged in an old USB Bluetooth dongle and got "Windows has stopped the device because it has reported problems (Code 43)."

I can't guarantee that I didn't inadvertently disconnect a cable somewhere when the bottom was off the laptop, but I was very careful and am fairly sure I didn't.

Does anyone have any helpful suggestions, please?

Michael

Hi Bruce (my hero...)

I installed 64 bit, it's a 64 bit laptop - all the defaults in that BIOS Window were right first time.

OS was whatever was current in October 2015, and has been continuously updated by Microsoft ever since. It should have been Win 10. Past midnight now, I'll go look for the drivers tomorrow.

Thanks again

Michael

Hi Bruce. I'm afraid it's a lot more complicated than you suggested. The actual website, found after following a lot of false trails is (for the UK at least) here. Then it's a trial to find your specific laptop - clue, under "Product" select "Archive". You know it makes sense (to a sadistic website designer who really doesn't want you to find what you need). Once you have found the right laptop model, there are four pages of driver downloads. I don't have a clue which I need, especially as there are several different bluetooth driver packages.

For info, here are screenshots from the site: screenshots (for some reason on the Toshiba clicking on the icon to insert an image in the message results in a request for an URL, on my desktop in the earlier thread it prompted to upload the file - but both use Chrome).

I am about to install the chipset utility, but to do that I have to close down all other programs, so I shall get back to you when I have seen what Device Manager says afterwards.

Michael

I'm back again, and despite being very confused, I have working Bluetooth! I installed the chipset utility without problem. Quite when it happened I don't know, but I had a notification that there was a Windows update to deal with. Since I have signed in to this site (why did it let me type a message if I wasn't signed in before?) the Attach files icon has appeared so I can add screenshots. All the listed updates are "pending download" but no matter how many times I click the download button, nothing appears to be happening. However, on clicking "Optional updates" I discovered there was a Bluetooth driver being offered, so I selected that, and it has downloaded and installed. And glory be, Bluetooth has appeared in Device Manager.

Earlier you wrote: "then get whatever else is missing". Do you think that downloading all the other drivers listed in "6 Driver updates.png" will achieve that?

Thank you, Bruce. The thing about Alzheimer's is, it doesn't (at my stage at least) reduce what the psychiatrists call your cognitive ability, that is your power to reason and work things out from your knowledge and the evidence in front of you and common sense. After hours of tests, my shrink pushed a button on her PC and came up with a score of 96% for that, so it seems that I'm pretty much still a genius. The trouble is, my ability to recall my knowledge and retain what's in front of me in short term memory at the time when I am trying to use it is at goldfish level. No use giving me an address or a telephone number or a sequence of instructions if I can't note it all down immediately and file it somewhere obvious. The effect is to make me anxious and uncertain about everything.

Any road up, a new battery is on the way for the laptop, the old one hasn't lasted much longer than the machine took to start up for a couple of years. Now startup to the desktop and being ready to surf takes seconds rather than fifteen irritating minutes or more, the laptop can be released from the PSU (and I'll stop tripping over the wire).

I still have four wretched updates supposedly ready to download from the batch that came through yesterday, which refuse to download. One of them may be the chipset utility you mentioned, I'm not sure now. I've seen lots of suggested solutions online for clearing them and resetting update, but nothing has worked yet. My last resort is an update rollback, which will doubtless make Bluetooth disappear again!

Michael

No go with the system restore. I forgot that it's turned off by default, didn't I? I have switched it on now, but it's too late for what I want it for!

Michael