How to get a bluetooth headset to work

I bought this great little laptop in part because of the bluetooth support. I wanted to use a BT mouse first, but I also wanted to use a bluetooth headset for voip applications.

I was not happy when I found that the machine didn't do the 'headset profile' because it only had the standard XP bluetooth stack. I called Sony on this several times and was told that "you might be able to find a 3rd party bluetooth stack" but they could give no further information.

I had poked around the web and found a Widcomm stack. But I couldn't get it to recognize the BT radio in my machine. I gave up for a year or 2.

I got inspired recently to take another shot. I had a version of Widcomm 5 from one of the several BT dongle's I'd bought. I copied that onto my machine.

I had to figure out what hardware this machine used. Somehow I figured out (or guessed) that it was Alps hardware. So the Widcomm stack I have should work, since it was also for an Alps based dongle.

I tweaked the btwusb.inf file in the widcomm installation software. If you look at this file, you'll see a lot of entries that include something like this:

USB\VID_044e&PID_3001

I think that '3001' thing is a hardware identifier for another ALPS bluetooth radio.

I went into Device Manager and looked at the properties for my existing bluetooth radio. My hardware was

USB\VID_044e&PID_3007

So.. 3007 instead of 3001.

I went through the btwusb.inf file, and for any line which contained

USB\VID_044e&PID_3001

I copied the "3001" lines (there were several) and changed it to 3007 . At this point, I was able to use device manager to change the driver to the Widcomm stack.

Next I ran the Setup program in the widcomm software.

It loaded up just fine and I can now use my headset.

Well, that only took 2 or 3 years to figure out..