10.5.7 - Bluetooth keyboard and mouse not working anymore

Fine, and thanks for the submission of your observation.

It's relevant for others to know, that the suggestion to disable the Bluetooth-PDA-Sync port, seems to work for some but not for all.

<< I think perhaps safari just might be a better application at finding it. Networking e,g. wireless interfering with BT drivers etc.
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For browsing I use Firefox 99% of the time and my iMac uses a wired connection (and has Airport turned off), so I agree, the fact you experience it with Safari is a red herring, I experience it mostly when using Firefox but that's because that's what I am mostly using.

FWIW I am on 10.5.6 but so are many others with the same problem, so either there are two completely separate bluetooth problems that both have the same fix (open the preferences panel), or, much more likely, something they did in 10.5.7 made this bug more likely to occur.

"Share my internet connection" is already off so thats not the answer, I have just disabled the Bluetooth-PDA-Sync port, lets see if that makes any difference.

Message was edited by: Tumbleweed666

re: the disabling Bluetooth-PDA-Sync suggestion, I did it two days ago and haven't had a phantom Bluetooth drop since (knock on wood). Running 10.5.7 with the Bluetooth 2.0 update on Broadcom hardware.

I'll update if it drops again, but if you don't hear back from me, assume it's still working. Thanks for the tip. (I still want Apple to actually fix the dag-burn problem, though...)

I've noticed lately, that everytime the disconnect happens, Time Machine is in the process of doing a backup to my Drobo which is connected wirelessly to my Airport Extreme base station. Don't know if this has been the case all along, but it has definitely been the scenario the last couple weeks or so.

Has a somewhat similar experience, as the BT devices did not respond when the Time Machine was in the process of backing up to the Time Capsule (spring 2008 model). However, after trying a couple of times the mouse began responding.

This BT issue really seems to be multifaceted.

I did the same, disble Bluetooth-PDA-Sync but the problem is still there. Now I had a phantom Bluetooth drop... so for me did not solve the issue.

I think this makes it obvious that there is more than one issue involved here, or at least more than one underlying cause.

One thing that occurs to me that may be the cause for some users (but clearly not all): BT is a radio. Radios are subject to radio frequency (RF) interference. In theory, BT is immune to most forms of RF interference because it hops from frequency to frequency very many times a second. However, broad spectrum interference can still clobber it. Again in theory, broad spectrum interference shouldn't happen because that part of the radio frequency spectrum is regulated by the FCC & similar organizations in other countries. But BT by intent uses very low power short range signals, easily disrupted by higher power signals from malfunctioning equipment, including those too weak to have long range effects the FCC or the like would notice.

So for instance, if your microwave oven or anything else capable of emitting broad spectrum interference in this band is even briefly malfunctioning enough to do this, it is possible it could cause a temporary, local disruption of BT connectivity.

Truthfully, I have no idea if this would be enough to cause disconnection or any of the other reported problems but if anybody can correlate something like someone running a microwave oven near an affected Mac when the problem occurs, it becomes something to consider. Perhaps Apple has done something in a recent update to make this more likely, or maybe it is just a coincidence that makes it seem so. Or maybe this theory is just too improbable to explain anything.

All I really know is that I have seen similar interactions between my cell phone & Airport when the two radios are very close together. That isn't supposed to happen but it does ....

Well, this doesn't explain why I never had a single disconnect in over 6 months from when I purchased my Macbook Pro up until I updated to 10.5.7. Every previous version of 10.5 was fine. After the update to 10.5.7 I immediately started getting disconnects a couple times a day.

Since I can work around it easily enough by using an optical mouse, I haven't bothered to do an archive and install to downgrade to 10.5.6, but has anyone else here done so, and did it fix the problem for them?

As I said, this theory would not explain everyone's problems. But it might help explain some of the post 10.5.7 problems if something in that update made BT connections more susceptible to this kind of interference. I don't think that is out of the realm of possibilities because so much of the OS updates deal with tightening security & some forms of interference might resemble attacks on the security of BT transmissions in some subtle way.

Or like I also said, maybe the theory is just too improbable to consider seriously.

I've finally fixed the problem for good on my iMac - using a wired Microsoft mouse and completely given up on the dismal Apple one, after 4 or 5 disconnects today over 2 or 3 hours of use.

Interesting -- I just had my first Bluetooth drop since implementing the above workaround, but it happened differently this time. The Mighty Mouse stopped like it normally does during the 10.5.7 phantom drops, but the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar went to "off" and I got a "connection lost" notification on the mouse. I turned the mouse off and on, and everything went back to normal. I'd had this type of drop before 10.5.7 but never with the frequency of the phantom drops (maybe twice a month, if that), and I hadn't had any since 10.5.7 was installed.

I have absolutely no idea what to make of that, but figured I'd add it to the permanent record. If the two types of drops are related, then perhaps the Bluetooth-PDA-Synch connection functionality is somehow causing the software/hardware to lock up when a normal drop occurs?

FWIW, I wasn't too busy today, so I tried disabling the PDA thing and using my mighty mouse again. I had another disconnect (same behaviour as before) halfway through the day. I only had one, but I wasn't using the computer as much and I usually only had a couple a day. So the PDA thing didn't seem to fix it for me, but I'll keep using it for the next few days to see what happens. (Unless I keep getting too many disconnects, then back to USB optical. 🙂

Hmm, as a complete aside, I just realized a problem with forums that automatically make ascii smileys into graphics. I sometimes use a simple smiley face at the end of a parenthesized comment to function both as a close-parenthesis and a smiley. But the auto-GUI smiley ruins this wonderful double use of punctionation. 😟

(Yeah, yeah, I know, git off my lawn!)

s/punctionation/punctuation/

Can't edit comments! 🙂

My 3 mighty mouses used to work fine with my old macbook but ever since I bought a new one:
- they will not connect automatically though I have paired them successfully
- they will drop the connection occasionally.

Worse is even that sometimes when the BT connection is dropped I won't be able to disable/enable bluetooth through the touch pad as I have also lost my ability to click on anything and I can do nothing but reset the laptop.