I need an alternative to bluesoleil.

January 12, 2009 2:45 AM

I refuse to believe that so many bluetooth devices out there that the bluesoleil brand blue tooth device drivers are my only option. I really dont want to spend 30$ CAD on a driver for my 7$ dongle. Rant aside I have windows xp on my new EeeBox (bluetooth not included in this model) I plan on using it in part as a media hub of sorts. I want to use a wiimote as my remote control and cant do this without the drivers to push it all. Please help Im sick of seeing bluesoleil telling me that i got a trial driver for my legitimately owned dongle.

The only real information I have on hand on my device is some generic isscbta device that apparently is compatible with bluesoleil but i dont wish to spend more money on my own dongle.

posted by Chamunks to Computers & Internet (15 answers total)

Have you tried simply uninstalling the BlueSoleil trialware and finding out whether Windows XP supports your dongle natively?
posted by flabdablet at 3:32 AM on January 12, 2009

Response by poster: I have pulled all the bluesoleil out of my device manager and cleaned my registry and temp files and i have also removed all resident traces of the old drivers AFAIK. Yet it allways seems to give me trouble after trying to install what i believe to be (or am lead to believe to be) full version BlueSoleil Drivers. I would love to find other means like the windows xp manager though i have no idea where im looking for that I havent seen anything mentioning bluetooth in control panel.

I would concidder myself to be rather savvy so it bothers me to think that an entire standard is locked down to some single crummy proprietary driver.

If there are any bluetooth driver packs to kindof swing an axe at trying to get this bad boy to work i would be happy because I bought this almost a year ago so i have no clue what make/model it is. It appears to be unbranded. *aside from a bluetooth logo.

Im running a fully legitimate copy of windows xp home edition on this EeeBox (though my problem is not limited to this computer alone but other computers aside for this issue). Fully updated using windows update. Service pack 3 doesent seem to do anything for this dongle though it wasnt plugged in at the time of the update.
posted by Chamunks at 4:09 AM on January 12, 2009

Response by poster: I have poked around and found that wikipedia seems to say that my options are extremely limited to pay for only drivers. Unless i wish to switch this thing to linux im starting to think im out of luck.
posted by Chamunks at 4:29 AM on January 12, 2009

it bothers me to think that an entire standard is locked down to some single crummy proprietary driver

If you insist on using a proprietary operating system, this will be your usual experience.

Any modern Linux distro will have full Bluetooth support right out of the box, more media-hub-related stuff available than you can possibly use, and will waste less of your time than Windows. So what's tying you to Windows?
posted by flabdablet at 4:31 AM on January 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

You can download different driver stacks - which ones might be best depends a lot on your particular dongle and which devices (and accompanying software) you might want to use. For example, Skype wouldn't work with my Jawbone headset until I installed Bleusoleil drivers for my dongle... it wasn't happy with the ones supplied by Microsoft.

Have you tried to install/update your drivers through the device manager? I just find it a bit strange that you need to install a separate driver for this particular dongle. Even really random dongles I've used seem to be completely PnP.
posted by Grrlscout at 4:32 AM on January 12, 2009

The discussions at this store might give you some useful info.
posted by alexei at 4:33 AM on January 12, 2009

Here's a little bit of discussion. No technical information but this person was able to get the dongle working with an XP driver. It seems like you should be able to get it to work without the $30 software. If not, can you return the dongle? Because it seems quite lame to sell a dongle that won't work without additional relatively expensive software.
posted by 6550 at 6:38 AM on January 12, 2009

Best answer: According to this you can modify the .inf file on the widcomm BT driver for your eeepc.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:56 AM on January 12, 2009

it bothers me to think that an entire standard is locked down to some single crummy proprietary driver

The standard is doing fine, thanks. Your problem is that you bought a computer from a company that is going out of its way to not support a piece of hardware it ships with. You should be angry at them, not MS or the BT alliance.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:59 AM on January 12, 2009

Response by poster: Its a separate dongle unfortunately my EeeBox wasnt a model that supports bluetooth. If that were the case i would be happily using bluetooth at this point. Because asus apparently has its own bluetooth driver for that model but since thats not my model it hasnt worked. I will look through some of these options thanks everybody.
posted by Chamunks at 1:47 PM on January 12, 2009

Wait, you bought a dongle and they want you to pay 30 dollars for the drivers to make it work or to remove a nag screen? If thats true then you should just return it and get one that works out of the box. Ive bought a few BT adapters and have never had to pay anything other than the initial purchase.
posted by damn dirty ape at 2:02 PM on January 12, 2009

Ive bought a few BT adapters and have never had to pay anything other than the initial purchase

Me too, but the ones I bought cost much closer to $30 than $7, and came supplied with fully licenced copies of either the Widcomm or BlueSoleil software.

Buying very cheap BlueTooth hardware without an accompanying software licence and having no hassles with it is, I fear, a pleasure reserved for the users of free operating systems.
posted by flabdablet at 4:50 PM on January 12, 2009

Google the hardware ID of the device, that will usually brings up some drivers. Follow these instructions.
posted by damn dirty ape at 4:58 PM on January 12, 2009

Response by poster: I do use linux on all of the other computers in the house i just wanted to leave the eeebox on its default os. Unfortunately it was over a year ago i bought this dongle and am only just getting around to really trying it out. I have found a version of widcomm that seems to sortof work. But basically bluesoleil isnt going to be my solution because the disk provided with the dongle was only trialware so im screwed into other means. But fortunately widcomm has come somewhat to my rescue more after work...
posted by Chamunks at 5:34 PM on January 12, 2009

Response by poster: -damn dirty ape-, I think that you should be sure to fully understand a question before you start getting offended. But thanks for your time and attention any ways.

I have yet to this day find a working solution but thanks to this post I have found some suggestions of other drivers that have somewhat supplemented my problem.

I am considering just purchasing a new dongle from a more reputable source than some random ebay auctioneers.
posted by Chamunks at 5:17 PM on March 9, 2009