10.8.5 broke my Bluetooth (USB)

[scottrichardson]

Hey all.

I use an external Bluetooth dongle on my mac pro to get decent signal strength for my magic mouse and trackpad (internal BT on Mac Pro sucks).

After 10.8.5 - Bluetooth dongle is no longer discovered. And since I disconnected the internal bluetooth unit in my Mac Pro, I have no bluetooth.

I connected a wired mighty mouse for now, but wondering if anyone has any tips to get this external dongle working again? It's worked for years without a hitch. First apple update to break it

Scottie

 

[satcomer]

Try a Reset Your PRAM to see if that helps.

 

[wepiii]

This is not mine, but I had the same problem and used this to fix…

*** You do need to download the Text Wrangler Program it mentions, opening in text edit won't work****


I found the SOLUTION for the BLUETOOTH PROBLEM, posted by user jf@format.de
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5304985

Now my Targus (Broadcom based) Bluetooth adapter works fine as before! Some additional detailed help:
First you need to find your bluetooth adapter's info, so open Applications/Utilities/System Information, then scroll to the USB section and check your bluetooth adapter's Product and Vendor ID. Mine is BCM92046DG-CL1ROM:

Product ID: 0x2153
Vendor ID: 0x0a5c

Convert the hexadecimal values to decimal with searching in google. e.g. '0x2153 in decimal'. In my case it's:

Product ID: 8531
Vendor ID: 2652

Now open Finder, choose Go/Go to Folder and paste this location:
/System/Library/Extensions/IOBluetoothFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport.kext/Contents/

Then open the file 'Info.plist' in TextWrangler (https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11009/textwrangler) and scroll down to the bottom of the file. I duplicated this block by copy and paste it back to the file:

<key>BroadcomUSBBluetoothHCIController - Targus</key>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
<string>com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostContr ollerUSBTransport</string>
<key>IOClass</key>
<string>BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTranspor t</string>
<key>IOProviderClass</key>
<string>IOUSBDevice</string>
<key>idProduct</key>
<integer>8532</integer>
<key>idVendor</key>
<integer>2652</integer>
</dict>

Just by replacing idProduct from 8532 to 8531 and save the Info.plist solved the problem after reboot!

 

[Nermal]

One of the posters in that thread apparently resolved it by installing the combo update. Give that a go first because it's sure to be a better solution than modifying system files.

 

[scottrichardson]

Thanks for the tips guys. I tried both installing the Combo updater, AND editing the .plist file using Text Wrangler. I converted the hex value as instructed (8449) but it just isn't working. Still not recognised.

In fact, now my cinema display (24") USB ports are not working either.

I am wondering if I can roll back to 10.8.4?

Correction: USB IS working on my displays. Just not all the time.

 

[scottrichardson]

Hey all... another update.

I tried resetting PRAM and also reconnecting my internal bluetooth module in the Mac Pro...

No dice. As soon as I plug in my dongle, my BT icon in the menu bar becomes disabled with the zig zag line through it.

I'm able to use my trakpad with the internal BT, but it's pretty terrible. Skipping and jumping my pointer around the screen.

I have three dongles here and none of them are working.

 

[schwankl]

after you updated the Info.plist did you rm -fr /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches ? It wasn't mentioned in this thread, but in this one: https://discussions.apple.com/message/22967453#22967453 and worked for me.

 

[scottrichardson]

after you updated the Info.plist did you rm -fr /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches ? It wasn't mentioned in this thread, but in this one: https://discussions.apple.com/message/22967453#22967453 and worked for me.

No I didn't - none of the tips I'd seen had suggested to do that. Thank you I'll give it a go now!

----------

So I tried to run that command in the terminal but I got a whole lot of permission denied alerts.

So I activated the root user and logged in as root and performed the action. Nothing happened, but I'm assuming it still worked. So I'll reboot.

 

[scottrichardson]

That fixed it! Thank you so much

I had to disconnect my MP's internal Bluetooth (again) for the external dongle to work. But it's now working perfectly as it did before on 10.8.4.

Many thanks.

Scott