BlueTooth - how to tell if I have it?

[Jaimi]

Hi - We ordered a batch of T60P notebooks, of which I got one. All of them have bluetooth except for mine -- It's not there when I hit FN-F5, and the bluetooth icon says "no device found". Pulling up my system in Lenovo's support page shows that it originally shipped with it.

No my question is: Is there a way I can tell by looking at the Mini-PCI card, that someone exchanged it, or that I got the wrong one installed from the factory? Or is there something I'm missing that might have disabled it? (I've checked the switch on the front, and the FN-F5, as well as the device manager).

[whizkid]

Call Lenovo immediately. They will talk you through this and fix any errors on their part, or help you fix any misconfiguration.

Though you might first try the ThinkPad Configuration software to see if it's turned off.

[brentpresley]

Hi - We ordered a batch of T60P notebooks, of which I got one. All of them have bluetooth except for mine -- It's not there when I hit FN-F5, and the bluetooth icon says "no device found". Pulling up my system in Lenovo's support page shows that it originally shipped with it.

No my question is: Is there a way I can tell by looking at the Mini-PCI card, that someone exchanged it, or that I got the wrong one installed from the factory? Or is there something I'm missing that might have disabled it? (I've checked the switch on the front, and the FN-F5, as well as the device manager).

These are NOT miniPCI BT modules. They are actually TINY (about the size of 1/2 width of a stamp and just as long) circuit modules installed in the display housing near the inverter board.

Please post your experience w/ Lenovo and what they find.

I'm curious b/c I have a Z61p that has a BT module but I cannot get it to turn on (and swapping w/ a known working BT module from my T60p has no effect). I'm thinking it may be a cabling issue, but don't know for sure yet.

[wallybear]

The Devices Manager (part of System Properties) will show you if you have Bluetooth hardware. But, having the hardware isn't enough....you have to have the drivers installed and turn everything on properly. I was surprised when I first got my T60 to find that the Bluetooth was not working (and so I thought the hardware was faulty just as you are suspecting).

I found that I had to download and install two things:

1- "Bluetooth with Enhanced Data Rate Firmware"

2- "Bluetooth with Enhanced Data Rate Software"

Once you install these two packages, Windows should "find" the Bluetooth hardware and prepare it for use. BUT, you will still have to right-click on the "My Bluetooth Places" icon on your desktop and chose "Start Using Bluetooth...". If the system responds with a message that it can't find a Bluetooth device, you'll have to use the ThinkVantage Access Connections utility. Open that utility and click on the Tools menu. Choose the last item in the menu, "Bluetooth Device" and from the sub-menu choose "Enable Bluetooth Radio". That will turn on the device and make it visible to Windows. You can then open the "My Bluetooth Places" icon on the desktop (or, there is a shortcut to it in the sub-menu in the Access Connections utility). Doing so will force Windows to actually install and enable the hardware drivers that you installed earlier. You'll see a series of messages in the system tray that tell you which parts of the Bluetooth hardware subsystems are being installed and activated. You will have to reboot for everything to work (and you'll see a message to that effect).

Your final step is to "find" (discover) devices in the My Bluetooth Places window. In that window, you'll find a menu named "Bluetooth" in which is an item to "Search for Devices" (among other things). From here, I'll leave it to you to set up and configure the devices you want to use because they are all slightly different. For example, in order to use my Logitech Bluetooth mouse, I had to install its driver first and then find it with the Search for Devices function. Also, to make my Dell Axim PDA connect to the T60 I had to install ActiveSync and then configure the Bluetooth link. I hope all that makes sense....it is a bit confusing, I admit. But, a hardware failure is the LEAST likely explanation for your frustrations.

So, as you can see from the long explanation I've labored to offer you here (at least I hope you do), getting Bluetooth to work isn't an easy, breezy, plug-n-play project. It takes work and knowing "how things work on a starship".

Let me know if this helps or write to me privately for more details.

[Jaimi]

Thanks to everyone for the help.
I've managed to get my "not found" bluetooth to work. What happened is that there is an option in the BIOS to HIDE the bluetooth device from the OS. This was turned on in my case. It's hard to see because it's off the screen, you have to scroll down to see it.

After turning this on, and following WallyBears instructions above, I was able to use my bluetooth mouse. Thanks!