Recently, I upgraded my Dell laptop to Windows 7 and I have been quite pleased with the new OS. Microsoft has made numerous performance and usability tweaks that make the overall Windows experience much nicer and more streamlined in general.
One problem I’ve had with the upgrade though is that Bluetooth support broke.
I forgot to turn on the Bluetooth radio before uninstalling the driver and upgrading to Win7, and Windows did not properly detect the hardware and install support for it.
However, I discovered that in order to turn on the radio, I needed a driver to talk to the hardware. But the original Vista driver refused to install under Win7.
So I was stuck up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
Fortunately, after a little searching with Google, I found this little Dell utility to switch on the BT radio, and although it didn’t specifically mention compatibility with my specific laptop model or with Win7, it worked fine for me.
Dell Support – R159805.exe: http://tinyurl.com/2ybqo6
After running the utility, Windows 7 immediately detected the hardware and rushed off to find and install the Microsoft Bluetooth drivers. After a reboot, everything works perfectly now, better than it did before with the original Dell / Widcomm Vista drivers, I might add.
So if you are having problems with Windows 7 detecting your Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR hardware, try this little utility and see if it helps.
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