Having trouble with a bluetooth device, can anyone help?

Do you have a Bluetooth icon in the task area? If so, does anything happen when you fiddle with that?

@mrentropy I used to but its not there anymore. I’m not sure what happened really it just stopped working.

is there a on button on the laptop itself for the device?

@bomyne Nope I’m afraid not, the only switch or button is the wifi one, which is on anyways.

My usual route for these kind of things is to uninstall everything Bluetooth related and re-install.

There may be a dedicated key on your keyboard for turning Bluetooth on and off, if you are sure there is no external switch. Generally those keys are color-coded to let you know what to press along with them (Alt, Fn) to engage them properly. If not, check Control Panel and make sure Bluetooth is activated.

I don’t know about the Studio’s, but on the Latitude the wireless switch controls everything that’s wireless that’s installed on the laptop (WLAN, WWAN, WiMAX, Bluetooth). Those settings can be changed in BIOS, though.

You should still be able to do something with the software, though. If you try and turn on a device in software when the hardware switch is off you’ll get an alert box that tells you that.

Since the Questioner can’t get anything to happen with the software I’m guessing that there’s a problem with the software or the Bluetooth utility.

If you go to the Start menu (or Windows button or whatever it’s called these days) there should be an entry for Bluetooth in the Programs listing. This will bring up the Bluetooth Phone Operations window. From here, you can turn on and off the adapter, or go to the options, or whatever.

Thanks for your answers. I managed to find a HP driver that works much better than the Dell one surprisingly enough and has my bluetooth up and running again.