I want to disable Bluetooth on my laptop running Windows 10 Pro x64, but I have a problem: the option to do so is missing even though I know that it was previously available.
Here is the Bluetooth settings pages should look like on Windows 10:
Here is how it looks for me:
As you can see, I am missing the switch to turn it on or off? Why is it missing? I know that just yesterday, it was available and I turned it off. What can I do to fix it?
Bring up the start menu. Search for "Device Manager".
Go to "View" and click "Show hidden devices"
In Device Manager, expand Bluetooth.
Right click on Bluetooth Generic Adapter and update the driver.
Restart.
Worked for me. :)
I found an easy fix that worked for me - turn off windows 10 fast-startup and then turn off your computer then on again. steps:
I found a solution that seems to work for me.
1.) Uninstall everything that is Bluetooth-related that is listed in Programs & Features.
2.) Uninstall all Bluetooth-related drivers listed in the Device Manager.
3.) Restart the computer. Bluetooth will be reinstalled, and you can reinstall the programs that you removed from Programs & Features.
The problem is mainly because the drivers provided by vendor does not support windows 10 (this happens if you have migrated from windows 7 or windows 8.1). Reinstalling the bluetooth driver (Programs and Features)only would solve the problem.
If you find yourself in this situation:
Is because: damn Microsoft f**** up the BIOS with some update.
I had to open a ticket with the Intel support because uninstalling / repairing / installing the right driver wasn't working. The solution was to enter in the BIOS and setup the default setting. After reinstall the Bluetooth was back:
That guy saved my day.
There are all kinds of problems that can cause this, judging by the amount of solutions I've found. Only one worked for me, so I'm adding this here.
I have a Dell XPS 13 9350 and had to do a reset of the BIOS to fix this. No idea what had changed in the BIOS, but multiple restarts didn't help. After resetting the BIOS to Factory settings (not BIOS Defaults, but I didn't try that), Bluetooth worked as expected again.
Most of the solutions here did not work for me. In my case, my laptop had an Intel Wireless Bluetooth driver. After searching for that, I ended up on Intel's website and downloaded the latest version of the driver. After running the executable and doing a "Complete" install, I restarted my machine and the Bluetooth switch returned to the Settings window.
Note, when I tried updating that same driver earlier through the Device Manager interface, Windows incorrectly told me that my Driver was the best and most up-to-date one already.
Without resetting BIOS I was able to solve the problem. I had the same issue like @Francesco Mantovani.
Action Center Bluetooth toggle was missing. Windows Settings didn't have any Bluetooth on/off toggle.
Device manager didn't show any Bluetooth devices and 1 USB controller had Device Descriptor Request Failed error
I tried updating / removing / uninstalling / reinstalling the same but didn't work.
Also, when I ran the bluetooth troubleshooter, it showed
Bluetooth is not available on this device
Solution
I performed a full shutdown and turned on the system. USB description failed error disappeared, device manager had Bluetooth. All the Bluetooth on/off toggle came back.
Hold Shift and then click Shut down button to perform a full shutdown
OS Build: 19043.1083
I just went into network connections and selected bluetooth then above that in the options selected disable and that disabled it.
I had the same issue, and from a comment (possibly @perpetualstudent's above) I found that a complete power-down (inculding unplugging the power supply) caused bluetooth to come back to life.
Another thing to consider, if you have a spare WLAN adapter / card for your laptop. You can also try to exchange the cards. Check if the Bluetooth afterwards works. Strangly for me it did with my old adapter as soon as I booted into Windows again. So I disabled Bluetooth, turned of the computer and switched my other one (previously not working) back in and it started immediately working again. The switch for turning on Bluetooth was showing up again and it was also listed in the device manager.
I tried most of the above listed suggestions but none did help or brought it back to life. However the quick swap did some magic. This seems to be a bug within Windows 10 because I'm pretty sure this wasn't a connection issue since the WLAN worked flawlessly. Another thing to note is that a driver update of either the WLAN or Bluetooth broke the Bluetooth functionality.
So if you have a second one lying around and don't want to tinker with software methods which probably won't work if you your adapter disappeared in the device manager try this out. It might be a quicker fix.
Maybe it is also enough to remove the adapter startup Windows, shut it down and put in the adapter again. I haven't tried that, but this might also be worth a shot.
PS.: Both adapters are Intel 7620 AC and 1030 N.
I had to do a system restore because I had previously installed the "ScpToolkit", which is for connecting a Playstation 3 Dualshock controller to your computer via bluetooth. It seemed to screw up the bluetooth on my Acer laptop completely.
I also tried uninstalling everything related to Bluetooth in Device manager and then reinstalling some of the Bluetooth drivers found on Acer website for my laptop but those didn't do anything. Bluetooth still wasn't showing up on Device Manager (even though I turned on View --> Show hidden devices).
I had tried everything and I thought it will never work but finally got it to work!
I had installed a USB bluetooth dongle as well after the fact which I have lost and it seemed a mashup.
I noticed I had another issue too that when I go into device manager, I was constantly refreshing after every little while. I figured I should perhaps fix that first and following up, it indeed was connected with bluetooth driver. When I uninstalled the bluetooth device, the refreshing stopped.
When I scanned for new devices, the bluetooth driver automatically got installed and refreshing problem appeared as well.
I had the show hidden devices option enabled from view menu. There were several items listed under blutooth (previously connected device). I uninstalled them all but they will come back when scan for new devices.
I repeated uninstalled them several times but on 3rd time, the refreshing stopped and out of no where I got this screen as well.
I checked all checkboxes and pressed Ok.
Now I got back to windows settings and I can see the bluetooth switch (enable/disable) option! I connected Bluetooth speak and it works!
So it's definitely he driver. Previously I did installed the new driver (find service tag of Dell system and took latest available driver from dell) but that alone didn't fix the issue.
Another suggestion I can give you is if you can somehow force this dialog (posted above) to come and selected `Allow bluetooth devices to find this PC' (this was the deselected when the dialog came up), that seems to apply the proper settings too perhaps.
Update
The problem returned after reboot. I searched "bluetooth" in installed programs for drivers and I had two different ones installed as listed bow. Uninstalling the WIDCOMM Bluetooth Software and rebooting fixed the issue for good. (First I let it stay and uninstalled the intel one but that didn't fix the problem).
If you're running a VM (virtual machine) client such as VMWare, VirtualBox (vBox), or Virtual PC, check to see if it's stealing the bluetooth device and disable that.
For instance, I have a VMWare client running on my work laptop. Today I discovered I was unable to use my bluetooth headset for a Zoom call on the laptop. The Bluetooth button in the Action Center was gone, and the Windows 10 bluetooth settings for my headset said simply, "Bluetooth is turned off".
After looking around for a while, I realized the VMWare client window was stealing the USB bluetooth adapter from the host (the laptop), as shown below. Once I unchecked that, all bluetooth features on the laptop came back:
I had this exact issue, however, it turned out to be a case of extreme user error.
I had recently changed out a mouse peripheral, and removed what I thought was the dongle for the old mouse. However, it turned out the dongle for the Bluetooth Adapter and the old mouse/peripheral dongle were sized & shaped exactly the same (with no branding).
So, after a while I realized the issue was less technical when Windows reported that there was no Bluetooth Capability - got the old mouse of the recycling bin and switched to the correct dongle... Yes not the smartest of solutions, but someday will hopefully help another person from unnecessary debugging
