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I accidentally turned off the bluetooth on my mid2011 imac-now neither my trackpad nor my keyboard will work..and I don't own a usb mouse..what next?

I accidentally turned off the bluetooth on my iMac (mid-2011; Lion)...now neither my wireless trackpad nor my wireless keyboard will work and I cannot turn it back on (and I do not own a usb mouse as was suggested on the apple support page. It also mentioned that the bluetooth could not be turned off except by a usb mouse.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Mar 11, 2012 9:10 PM

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Posted on Apr 25, 2016 9:59 PM

Easier solution: command-spacebar, search for Bluetooth File Exchange, arrow down to select it, and it will prompt you turn on Bluetooth. Click Enter.

16 replies

Mar 12, 2012 7:20 PM in response to Tafftech

Thanks everyone for your help! I'm a mac newbie and thought I was turning off the bluetooth file transfer and was in a panic. Simply rebooting didn't work, but when I unplugged my usb backup drive and usb printer, unpplugged the computer from the wall and then plugged it back in, it detected both the trackpad and keyboard.

Jul 24, 2012 9:41 PM in response to gjs45

This might not be the same issue, but:


I have a mid 2010 27" iMac that occasionally loses all BlueTooth connections. I just had a chance to test this.


I found my iMac just starting to run the screensaver. It was looking for pictures, then found them and began displaying them. None of my three Apple BlueTooth devices (keyboard, Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad) worked. So far, this is just like all the other times this has happened.


I recently got a wired Apple trackball mouse, and plugged that in. It woke the iMac, and gave me a cursor. I could use the menu bar BlueTooth icon to see that BlueTooth was off. I could not turn it on with the menubar icon.

I tried to turn BlueTooth on with BlueTooth preferences and that didn't work either.


I could log out, but couldn't log back in because logging out did not bring the BlueTooth keyboard back on.


A soft restart worked, bring BlueTooth back up as usual.


Console reports


07 24 12 9:03:04.000 PM kernel: E:[AppleUSBBluetoothHCIController][StartBulkPipeRead] ClearPipeStall failed with error 0xe000404f


This is an error that I've seen in other instances where BlueTooth has failed. I've also seen this reported on the web.


As this seems like a software problem, I'm holding out hope for a fix in Mountain Lion.

Jan 17, 2015 11:01 AM in response to gjs45

I had the same problem and wanted to add one more solution to the list. I had a laptop on the same network which I'd used to screen share with my iMac. When the Bluetooth was turned off, I was able to use the laptop to restart the computer. So, on the off chance you have another computer on your network, you may be able to control the mouse remotely.

I accidentally turned off the bluetooth on my mid2011 imac-now neither my trackpad nor my keyboard will work..and I don't own a usb mouse..what next?

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