Can't turn off Bluetooth! Mac OS claims laptop keybd & mouse are bluetooth.

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Level 2

155 points

Can't turn off Bluetooth! Mac OS claims laptop keybd & mouse are bluetooth.

Since a recent update, or since installing the update for Magic Trackpad, even though I removed all pairing preference references I can see to Magic Trackpad and it's in another room out of range, paired to a different Mac now, I can not turn off Bluetooth on either MacBook that have had Magic Trackpad installed.. The computer complains that "You cannot control your computer if you turn Bluetooth off at this time ... you would loose your input devices." Well, on a laptop, since all that is built in, that's kind of an impossible claim. This is a security hazard to nolonger be able to disable Bluetooth. What to do?

MacBook 2GHZ Black, Mac OS X (10.6.4), 2 GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Posted on Oct 9, 2010 11:19 PM

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Answer 1

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BWDC

Level 1

26 points

Oct 19, 2010 10:37 AM in response to Xapplimatic

Check out this topic: Forum : Bluetooth, USB, FireWire, ExpressCard/34 slot, RAM (MacBook Pro)
Search for Can't turn off bluetooth on MBP. This problem seems to be occurring on laptops that don't have the new trackpad (with gestures) built in. Someone cleverly discovered the solution: plug in a wired usb mouse. Then you can turn off bluetooth. But each time you use the magic trackpad you will have the same problem arise.

Let's hope that apple comes up with a solution for this, we want to save battery life!

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Answer 2

Xapplimatic Author

Level 2

155 points

Nov 15, 2010 10:13 AM in response to BWDC

I tried targetted assassinations of certain system preferences files related to networking and bluetooth but none of the wiped out files fixed the issue. What I did which seems to have permanently solved the issue was delete one file using a maintenance utility program that caused the computer to think it was starting up for the first time and it wanted to re-run the intial Welcome to Mac OS X stuff with the anim and all. Fortunately this didn't mess up my user accounts or anything because I just opted for "transfer from connected volume" and every account was perfectly duplicated with the exception of the system preference files responsible for the Bluetooth issue. I was not able to even log in to my old accounts without the bluetooth problem.

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