Dell BlueTooth gone mad

Posted by: DWallach

Dell BlueTooth gone mad - 02/10/2005 14:09

My wife's Dell Inspiron 600m has gone bonkers. We ordered it with all the options, including Dell's internal Bluetooth device, apparently made by Cambridge Silicon Radio. What's happening: the Bluetooth icon in the tray will show a white logo on a blue field (as it should), but then will turn red and you'll hear the sound of "oh, a device seems to have disconnected". Windows XP then handily offers that "one of the USB devices connected to this computer has malfunctioned" and you can click the balloon for help, but you have to be quick because if the Bluetooth resurrects itself before you can click the balloon, too bad for you. After finally clicking the thing, it unhelpfully told me that one of the USB hubs had something unknown connected to it.

We haven't installed anything particularly unusual on this machine. No weird spyware; AdAware only found three tracking cookies. All the latest Microsoft patches and Dell patches have been installed. Web surfing is done through Firefox, not IE. The Bluetooth drivers are whatever Dell shipped with the machine, rather than whatever else (e.g., various Google searches have turned up instructions for removing Microsoft drivers, but it's not at all clear that I either have them or want to remove them).

I thought, maybe I could just go to the boot screen and disable the Bluetooth altogether, since we're not using it for anything yet. Unfortunately, the BIOS only allows me to disable all wireless. We use the 802.11 all the time, so that's no good.

Any thoughts? Am I looking at a hardware problem?
Posted by: andym

Re: Dell BlueTooth gone mad - 02/10/2005 14:16

I would say it was hardware. My bluetooth on my iBook is just a USB device too, it appears in the system profiler. Being an option it could've worked it's way loose. I haven't a clue where to look, I remember my Lat had loads of flaps and panels on the bottom so I suppose you could look under there.
Posted by: Roger

Re: Dell BlueTooth gone mad - 02/10/2005 15:25

Quote:
I would say it was hardware. My bluetooth on my iBook is just a USB device too, it appears in the system profiler.


If you're not using it, you can disable it in Device Manager. Hopefully this will stop it doing odd things.
Posted by: drakino

Re: Dell BlueTooth gone mad - 02/10/2005 15:56

It looks like physically removing it would be a pain on the 600m model. It's under the palm rest, so the display would have to be removed then the palm rest to get at it.
Posted by: DWallach

Re: Dell BlueTooth gone mad - 02/10/2005 16:45

Quote:
If you're not using it, you can disable it in Device Manager. Hopefully this will stop it doing odd things.

If only it showed up in the device manager long enough to disable it. Right now, it's simply appearing and disappearing every couple seconds. This behavior seems to correlate with the use (and vibration?) of the DVD drive.

Looks like I've got to deal with Dell warranty support. We have the three year extended CompleteCare warranty, so the only question is how to expedititiously get through their phone support hell to somebody who I can convince that, really, it's a hardware problem and they should please do something about it. Any advice?
Posted by: matthew_k

Re: Dell BlueTooth gone mad - 02/10/2005 18:57

Quote:
Any advice?

Email. By which I mean their web form which generates a support request which they respond to by email. They'll send you the usual "reinstall the driver" response, you respond back with "it didn't work..." and they'll tell you they're sending someone out. It's by far the most painless way of dealing with Dell support.

As Drakino posted, the bluetooth card is an amazing pain to get at on the 600m, but it's doable by following dell's instructions. Might as well let them handle it, they're pretty quick to respond.

Matthew
Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: Dell BlueTooth gone mad - 03/10/2005 11:56

Quote:
It looks like physically removing it would be a pain on the 600m model. It's under the palm rest, so the display would have to be removed then the palm rest to get at it.

It's actually not that bad. I'd do that. There are really nice instructions on that link.
Posted by: russmeister

Re: Dell BlueTooth gone mad - 03/10/2005 12:05

Quote:
It's actually not that bad. I'd do that. There are really nice instructions on that link.


When you have complete service from Dell? Of course, after the last dell rep we had come to our office (John and I work together), I'd probably do it myself too.

I'll let John tell the story if he so desires.