Alternate Windows 7 x64 Bluetooth USB Adapter

[BillyBoyFloyd]

Not an Eventide recommended dongle, and I’m not suggesting it be added.

I run Windows 7 SP1 x64. I used Eventide’s recommended Startech dongle for a year with very marginal results, it crapped completely this week.

Having only a Best Buy store near me, I bought their only available dongle:

Insignia NS-PCY5BMA2. It says it is Win 7,8,10 compatible, but it is hard to install to Windows 7 x64. 90% of online help says this part won’t work under Win 7 at all.

I did manage it however. A tedious websearch found a partial fix, which I levereged to get it to work.

It took time, but it now WORKS GREAT, way better than the Startech dongle ever did. And thinking back, the Startech dongle took a ton of work because you had to install the BlueSoleil drivers, then delete them later, leaving the windows default driver to take over.

So if you care to try it, there are several similar dongles by Insignia all based on the Broadcom BCM2070.

 

How I got it to work:

Likely Windows 7 will detect it when inserted, but then tells you it cannot install the device; it wlll fail to locate a driver for it if you ask it to search for one.

Leave dongle inserted and open Device Manager.

Look for device type of “Other” named “BCM20702A0” or similar, should stand out clearly with the yellow triangle troubled device icon.

Right click the BCM20702A0 device, and Update Driver Software. An install wizard runs.

Choose option to Browse Computer, not Search Automatically.

Choose to “..pick from a list of device drivers..”.

If check box marked for “compatible hardware”, uncheck it.

Find the Broadcom BCM2033 Bluetooth 2.4GHz Single Chip Tranceiver driver.

Finish the install wizard and restart your computer. The BCM2033 driver will allow Windows to get the bluetooth system started, but won’t run the dongle correctly.

Go right back into Device Manager. The dongle should now appear under devie type “Bluetooth Radios”.

Update Driver Software again, but this time use the Search Automatically option, and all of a sudden Windows finds and installs a new driver:

“Micro size USB to Bluetooth Dongle” by Broadcom Corporation, version 6.5.1.6820 Date 12/21/2015.

Results were worth the effort.

[Author]

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