Bluetooth: Not Available on El Capitan 10.11.6
Over the last year I've had my bluetooth module act very oddly. For most of this time it has just read "Bluetooth: Not Available". I'm not sure when it started, since I didn't have much use for it but I always kept an eye on it since it would be useful if I had it.
Well this last month it just started randomly working. I was able to debug external bluetooth modules using LightBlue with no issues, life was good. Well I had a different issue where I could not get my external hard drive to connect through a powered USB 3.0 HUB. To fix that I reset the NVRAM and on bootup it fixed my external drive problems! But to the unfortunate demise of the bluetooth module... it has gone back to the "Bluetooth: Not Available" error.
So it went from me thinking that my module was broken to it seemingly working and something else going on. I have tried the following steps to fix it:
- Reset the SMC
- Reset the NVRAM (again, thankfully my external drive still works)
- Sleeping the Mac and waking it back up
- Restarting the Mac
- Shutting down the Mac and turning it back on
None of those above steps worked. I can't find any information on this issue outside of resetting the SMC or NVRAM. Is there anyone out there that has studied this issue and have a way of fixing it without me having to just get the module replaced (which I am not convinced will actually work, since the module appears to function).
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)