Feed
 

OS 10.6.6 and Bluetooth

Avatar Steve Ryder
I recently updated to 10.6.6 using the Combo updater, and a few days later found that not only did my Bluetooth Magic Mouse (which. incidentally, is a wonderful beast) failed to connect, but also that the Bluetooth Preference pane in System Preferences had disappeared without trace.

I found the following discussion http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2712704&start=15&tstart=0 which seemed to be entirely relevant, and suggested that the SMC might need resetting, and gave a reference to an Apple article on the subject http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964 which again was useful. In the end, I did not have to reset the SMC, but closing down and then restarting (as the article suggested) did the trick. Maybe this is an issue which Apple will fix in the next release?

Re: OS 10.6.6 and Bluetooth

Avatar Mick Burrell
I've just done the upgrade and part of it was the the computer had to restart to complete the installation - did yours not do that? I don't have bluetooth keyboard or mouse but my bluetooth icon is still in system preferences and bluetooth works fine with my phone.

Re: OS 10.6.6 and Bluetooth

Avatar Steve Ryder
Update went as normal with a restart.

Re: OS 10.6.6 and Bluetooth

Avatar Mick Burrell
odd that the restart after installation didn't bring bluetooth into operation but a subsequent one did. Although you say 'a few days later' - did you turn the machine off at all during those few days? If so, I'd be looking for something that happened in the last session before the fault to be the cause rather than the update itself.

Re: OS 10.6.6 and Bluetooth

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Until last Autumn, our iMac would occasionally 'lose' the Bluetooth Magic Mouse and need a restart to find it. It hasn't happened for a long time now so I assumed a recent update must have fixed it. I don't recall ever missing the Bluetooth Preference pane though. I upgraded to 10.6.6 via Software Update rather than the Combo updater and had no problems. As Mick says, I think this may be just a misleading coincidence.

Re: OS 10.6.6 and Bluetooth

Avatar Gordon Clyne
I would encourage everyone to do a restart when your mac suggests it. The reasons are that when a Mac wakes from sleep, and has a lot of tasks in the scheduler, or a ton of clicks (someone persistently hitting the keyboard as the Mac tries to wake from deep sleep for example - Grey screen, progress bars along the bottom, laptops only) there can be a condition where non essential tasks get overflowed and things like a BT pref change get lost. If you have ever looked at a system log, you can see this but its a forensic task at best.

if you dont restart for several days, this is highly likely after several wakes.

Re: OS 10.6.6 and Bluetooth

Avatar Steve Ryder
As I said in my original post, closing down and then restarting was necessary to fix the problem. Perhaps two successive restarts would have achieved the same effect. I always restart the Mac when it instructs me to do so, but it is true that I don't turn it off very often.

Re: OS 10.6.6 and Bluetooth

Avatar Trevor Hewson
FWIW my ritual is to put the iMac to sleep overnight except on Friday when, prompted my an iCal alarm, it is shut down completely. I must admit that this is based on nothing more than a vague thought that no garbage collection system is perfect so a clean start from time to time must be a good thing. I used to turn the router off overnight too but, since learning a bit more about BT's automatic line management scheme, I now try to leave it on for a month or so at a time.

Re: OS 10.6.6 and Bluetooth

Avatar Gordon Clyne
the big issue is the more apps you have, the less you can tell WHEN something wants to run, be it the middle of the night for and update check, or once a week for general maintenance, weve tried a couple of schemes in the past, but I'll gladly share at Salisbury tonight.....
 
Feed