Do you have trouble tether your phone to your pc via Bluetooth? This might help.

[scdreamin3]

This may help others who have the same setup.

  ****I guess I should put a disclaimer on this. This setup should only be completed by someone with at least moderate computer skills. I do not guarantee this will work for your computer. It helped mine greatly, and as such I figured I would pass along the information to someone having trouble with their Bluetooth device.****

  Although I doubt that anyone has near the same setup as I do. I have posted it many times, but in case you don't know, I have an Alltel hue cellular phone that is used as a modem. I pay $25 a month for unlimited data usage. The phone is tethered to my pc via a bluetooth dongle. The reason I use a dongle instead of a usb cable is because the usb cable does not charge the phone. I would have to disconnect from the internet and recharge my phone every couple of hours. So a dongle connected to it allowed me to keep the charger plugged into my phone and thus no disconnecting every couple of hours.

  Unfortunately,  I was getting very slow speeds with my Bluetooth dongle. I would get roughly 190 to 250 kbps. After this switch I now get between 230 - 350kbps. Not much speed, but hey, at least its faster than 56k dial up. Also I bought it off of ebay and the driver software that came with it was BlueSoleil. I hated BlueSoleil. It was hard to operate, and didn't work half the time. I had to pair with my Alltel hue phone(used as modem) every other log in or so. Unfortunately, with my sp3 update, the Windows Bluetooth stack was nowhere to be found. I did some searching and found that the Widcomm stack would be best for my setup.The enclosed guide was not made by me. Follow the instructions exactly as printed and you should have a great bluetooth setup.

Also follow these posts, they will help tremendously.

http://www.testmy.net/t-1013

http://www.testmy.net/t-18907

http://www.testmy.net/t-3924

I used this process for maximum bluetooth speed and capabilities.

How to install Widcomm drivers

What you will require:

1. Widcomm drivers (search the forums and locate the ones of your choice in this guide, I am using version 5.1.0.1100 obtained from: http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=294359)

2. Widcomm patcher v2 (obtained from: http://allbt.land.ru/Widcomm_patcher_v2.rar)

3. Optional: Your original bluetooth drivers

Step 1 (Preparation)

First things first, if you have some bluetooth drivers already installed, you should find out who the manufacturer of your device is. This is because Widcomm/Broadcom 'broke' compatibility with other manufacturer's devices from version 5.1.0.1100 onwards. If you are not sure, I would recommend downloading 5.1.0.1100 just to be sure (http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=294359)

Next step is to obviously uninstall your current drivers (if you have any), which can be done from the Add/Remove Programs bit in Control Panel. Also, remove any bluetooth device drivers by using device manager in System (found in Control Panel):

1. Go to Control Panel, double click on 'System'

2. Click on 'Hardware' tab, then 'Device Manager'

3. In there, expand any bluetooth devices and right click and select 'uninstall' (Repeat for all Bluetooth)

Now you may unplug your bluetooth device while we proceed.

Step 2 (Preventing Windows native Bluetooth Stack)

Then, you should remove prevent the Windows native bluetooth working:

Make sure that you have enabled viewing of hidden/system files:

1. Press Windows key + 'e' key at the same time (Windows Explorer pops up)

2. Click on Tools (Menubar) > Folder Options... > View (Tab):

3. Enable 'Show hidden files and folders'

4. Uncheck 'Hide extensions for known file types'

5. Uncheck 'Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)' - you might get a warning, click Yes/OK

6. Click on OK to exit.

Now, go to C: Drive, Windows directory, 'inf' folder, in there you will find two files, bth.inf & bth.pnf.

Rename both of these to bth.inf.old & bth.pnf.old (in each case, confirm with the pop up box). (Left click to highlight the file and press F2 to edit the filename)

Now restart your computer.

Step 3 (Getting your USB Bluetooth drivers ready)

The next step is to find out if you have the original drivers for your bluetooth adapter. If you do, get them and on the CD, look for a file called 'btwusb.inf' which contains the information required to install your bluetooth adapter later on. If you get that file, copy it into the Win32 & Win64 folders of the Widcomm drivers folder. It should ask you if you want to overwrite, select yes.

If you don't have your original bluetooth manufacturer drivers and you can't get them off the internet, then here is what I did:

First of all plug in the adapter and let windows discover the device and let windows try to install it, but it will fail. Uncheck the 'Don't ask me next time'.

1. Go to Control Panel, double click on 'System'

2. Click on 'Hardware' tab, then 'Device Manager'

3. In there, locate the Unknown (yellow) hardware device, expand it and double click on it.

4. Click on the 'Details' tab and in there you should see a line similar to this: USBVID_13DD&PID_0001012B4A-5B-0002

The numbers might be different, but what we are interested in are the VID_XXXX&PID_XXXX (XXXX = 4 digit number).

Make a note of them and then in the Widcomm drivers folder, under win32 folder, open the btwusb.inf for editing (prefereably in notepad). Now we will manually add our device.

First things first, in the btwusb.inf file, do a quick search for your VID number (e.g. 13DD) and see if there are already matching entries for your device - make sure that the VID number and PID number are both correct.

If so, then you don't need to edit the file. To search (if you are in notepad, press 'CTRL' (key) + 'f' key at the same time and type in your VID number and click on 'Find Next')

If you haven't located your device, then proceed:

There are three lines to add:

-In [ControlFlags] section:

-Add a line: ExcludeFromSelect=USBVID_XXXX&PID_XXXX (change the XXXX with the numbers from your device)

-In [WIDCOMM.NTx86.5.1] section:

-Add a line: %****.DeviceDesc%=BTWUSB, USBVID_XXXX&PID_XXXX ; My BT USB Dongle

Where the **** is a string or single word in CAPITALS (e.g. your manufacturer's name ITECH) and the XXXX's are the same numbers as before (VID & PID respectively).

Finally, in [strings] section:

- Add a line: ****.DeviceDesc="My BT USB Dongle"

Where **** must be the same word used in the previous step (again in CAPITALS) and the bit between the quotes can be anything you like - it will be used to display whatever your BT adapter is called in Device Manager. Try to stick with just spaces and letters.

Now you can save the file and proceed with installation.

Step 4 (Installing the Widcomm drivers)

Now you are ready to install the Widcomm drivers, once again, under the folder, double click on setup.exe and the process should begin. Confirm whenever it pops up with the 'Warning, not digitally signed, continue?' box and mid way through when it says no bluetooth adapters found, just click cancel to proceed anyway. Once it has finished, you must restart the computer in safe mode to patch the bluetooth drivers.

Step 5 (Patching the Widcomm drivers)

Restart your computer and while it's booting up (you can see the black bios screen where it detects your CPU, hard drives, etc), press the F8 key repeatedly, maybe once every half a second, keep doing this and instead of Windows loading up, you will see a list of options. Select the option at the very top 'Safe Mode' and press enter. On entering safe mode, select 'Yes' to continue.

Now locate the Widcomm_patcher_v2.exe program and double click on it. you will see three little dots next to 'BTStackServer.exe', click on those three dots and then navigate to (C: )Local Disk > Program Files > WIDCOMM > Bluetooth Software. In there you will see a file 'BTStackServer.exe'. Double click on it and the file should begin patching. (Select ok to continue)

Next, another file appears, do the same as above, but this time the file is called BTTray.exe. Again, click ok once it's been patched.

The third file to be patched is found in (C: )Local Disk > Windows > System32. It's a .dll file, but it's the same process as the above two steps. The forth step is also in the same location (another .dll file).

Once this is done, you may reboot your computer again.

Step 6 (Installing your Bluetooth USB drivers)

You should notice that you have a 'My Bluetooth Places' Desktop icon as well as a little bluetooth icon in the system tray (that's red). We are nearly there. All we need to do now is to plug in your bluetooth device and Windows should pop up with a 'New hardware found' box. Click on Advanced install and uncheck everything except for 'search this specific folder' (not the exact words), and click on browse. The in the new window, navigate to C: Drive > Program Files > WIDCOMM > Bluetooth Software > bin, then click on OK and it should begin installing your device automatically.

Once that is done, you should notice that your bluetooth icon in the system tray has now turned from red to white. You can double click on the icon and it should pop up with a wizard to guide you through the initial bluetooth setup process. Now you can start using pairing and using your bluetooth devices!