Friday, July 3, 2009

Pairing Bluetooth Devices in Windows Vista

Windows Vista has a few quirks when compared to previous Windows releases. One such quirk is when pairing a Bluetooth device with your system running Windows Vista, a COM PORT is automatically assigned to the Bluetooth device without user input. Previous versions of Windows (e.g. Windows XP) allowed users to select from the available COM PORTS list when setting up a Bluetooth pairing.

Often some software or terminal input programs may only go up to a specified number of COM PORTS (e.g. COM PORT 20 as a maximum), which causes problems if the Bluetooth Device Manager in Vista has automatically paired your Bluetooth device to an available COM PORT above this threshold.

To get around this issue:
- From Windows Control Panel, navigate to Vista's Device Manager
- Go to the Ports category
- Locate the listed pairing/relationship to your Bluetooth Device
- Right-click on this listing and go to Properties
- Within the Advanced Settings window, there is a drop down box where you can specify the COM PORT for that particular Bluetooth connection

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