Getting Bluetooth to Work After Moving Boot Camp Partition to New Mac

bluetoothbootcamp

I had a Boot Camp partition with Windows 7 on my 2008-era MacBook Pro, and everything worked fine.

I have a new MacBook Pro. I partitioned it using the Boot Camp Assistant, and then I copied my old Boot Camp partition using Winclone. After booting into Windows on the new Mac, I ran the Boot Camp Windows Support stuff, which supposedly installed current drivers. Almost everything works fine: I have the hi-res display, trackpad works fine, sound works fine, etc.

However, Bluetooth isn't working at all. When I try to add a device, no Bluetooth devices appear in the list. In Device Manager, the "Apple Broadcom Built-in Bluetooth" icon has a yellow warning triangle on it.

I tried uninstalling that driver and then re-running the Boot Camp Windows Support setup, but I'm back to the same situation.

Any suggestions? (Other than reinstalling Windows and all my Windows applications from scratch.)

Best Answer

Apparently the problem is that the "Apple Broadcom Built-in Bluetooth" driver is not the right one for the new hardware. Here's what I did to fix it:

  • Open Device Manager, open the Bluetooth Radios subtree, right-click the "Apple Broadcom Built-in Bluetooth" icon, and choose the "Update Driver Software..." menu item.
  • Choose "Browse my computer for driver software"
  • Choose "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer"
  • Select "Apple Inc." for Manufacturer, and "Apple Built-in Bluetooth" for Model, and click Next.

After the driver installed, "Apple Broadcom Built-in Bluetooth" had been replaced by "Apple Built-in Bluetooth" and "Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator" in the Bluetooth Radios subtree of Device Manager, and I was then able to use the Add a device wizard to set up my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard.

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