I have a JBL Flip 3, a PC with Windows XP SP3 and USB Bluetooth adapter (something like that). I can add the speaker to the device list, but I can't connect to it. How can I do it?
Thanks for all the help
41 Answer
As the answer I have to provide more information than just in comment above.
So, Microsoft Bluetooth drivers are availabl,e only starting from Windows XP SP3. Before that you had to use third party Bluetooth drivers. At that time there are three well-known:
- BlueSoleil
- Toshiba
- WidComm (also known as Broadcomm)
Starting from Windows XP SP3 the 4th Bluetooth driver become avalable: Microsoft. There were others Bluetooth drivers but they were not popular.
However, as anything related to MS, native Microosft Bluetooth driver was very featureless: it supports only HID (Human Interface Device), DUN (Dial-Up Network), SPP (Serial Port Profile) and PAN (Personal Area Network) profiles. Also it can receive and send files using OPP (Object Push Profile).
So to be able to use Audio, HadsFree, SyncML, PhoneBook or any other profiles you had to install one of the third party driver listed above.
These days (and, as far as I remember, starting from Windows 8) Windows supports at least Audio and, partialy, HandsFree devices. And, as far as I know, WidComm does not support their drivers. Actually there are only 2 real Bluetooth drivers are available:
- BlueSoleil
- Toshiba.
Toshiba usualy ships their Bluetooth driver with their hardware (laptops). BlueSoleil can be downloaded from their site ().
Why I told "real Bluetooth driver"? Because starting from Windows 7 you can write Microosft Bluetooth drivers extention with that expands MS driver with any feature you like (that is the way WidComm went).
So now short answer to the original question: On Windows XP you should use one of the third party driver available today: BlueSoleil or Toshiba. Once Toshiba is hard to download and it may be a problem to get it working with your Bluetooth hardware you have the only one way: use BlueSoleil.
P.S. In fact, any Bluetooth driver can work with any Bluetooth hardware because low-level Bluetooth protocol (protocol between driver and Bluetooth chip) is well documented and universal (it is called HCI). But Bluetooth driver vendors hardly encode hardware IDs (VID/PID for USB) in the driver's INF file. So if there is no your device's VID/PID driver will not be installed. But you can add it by hands.
I hope that can be accepted as the answer now.
