Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth and Windows 7

just after I removed 7 from my XPS, too, you are slow on the pickup for me to solve it

anyway, just use the Vista drivers. the BT driver architecture hasnt changed (aside from adding audio to the universal support)

Hello,

I had the same problem with my M1730. This is the driver I downloaded from Dell and it worked perfect for my 350 Bluetooth card.
DELL_WIRELESS-370-BLUETOOTH-_A02-1_R235898.exe

Sorry to hear that Evil. With my M1730 this driver works better with win7 then when I was using vista with the Dell drivers.
Keyboard and mouse is about the same, but my Motorola HT820 works much better with these divers. With Win7 Microsoft drivers I had to first turn on my headset then start my computer for Bluetooth to see my headset. Now I can start my headset any time and Windows will see it.

similar troubles

I have recently moved from XP Pro to Windows 7 on my Dell M65 laptop. The upgrade adviser gave a green check mark for the Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth module.

Noted under XP Pro, the module performed flawlessly.

After installation of 7, the default Microsoft driver did not allow it to function correctly, so on advise from Dell technical chat, I installed the Vista driver from dell.

It works - kind of. Erratic is the term best used for describing what's happening.

The day of installing the vista driver - my BT mouse would connect, then after going idle would lose the connection, and I would have to manually add the mouse again. Later that night, I could not make the laptop recognize the mouse at all. After giving up for the night, I shut down.

Today, was different - the module would disappear from the device manager list and reappear, (the blue indicator light blinking on and off accordingly, and the unplug/plug-in device sound played) sometimes in cycles, the mouse would reconnect on its own and all is good until the module would disappear off the device manager list again then reappear.... and reconnect the mouse on its own.

On advise from Dell technical chat, I shut down and removed the trim piece above the keyboard and unplugged the module, plugged it back in and made sure the tiny cable was firmly in place. After powering up, I still got a few "disappear/reappear" cycles, now it is stable.

It's been running for two hours now with the bluetooth behaving normally.

I am assuming Win 7 does not 100% like the vista driver for this bluetooth module.

Since the module is falling off the device list and then reappearing and functioning normally until the next time it drops off, I think maybe it could be the tiny connection cable, or even the module itself going wacko. - but I think not since only two days ago it was flawless under XP Pro - so I think the chances of the cable or module going bad during windows 7 installation are slim -- but still a possibility.

Also - to rule out the mouse, I connected my cellphone and the same thing as the mouse experiences.

Anyone have any ideas?

How can a bunch of 350 module owners ask Dell to release a driver for Windows 7? I understand the module is aging, hell, my M65 is now four years old.

which driver are you using? I'm using R226750 (under x64) and haven't had any problems with it myself

I am using R142181. That was the only one listed for my service tag for Vista 32-bit for the 350 module.

The R226750 driver you mention is for a much newer 370 mini card.

I dont even think I could try to use that driver because the hardware is so different between the 350 and the 370.

yeah it's for a 370, but works fine for the 350, thats what I have as well (well, 355). I think it was some information I found in the Dell forums that suggested that one in particular originally. the stack itself is a generic stack, and will pretty much work with any Broadcom-based Bluetooth device (which the Dell Bluetooth modules are).

works great for me. I'm on the 3rd time installing 7 (first for the launch party thing, then I took it back off because I was going to use that license for another machine, then I bought an upgrade for my XPS, and then just last week I got a new hard drive so did a clean install of 7 again), worked great for me every time.

Oh wow, I will give that one a try and report back!

Edit: 10 minutes later.....
There must be a difference between the 350 cards and anything newer (like your 355) because the R226750 driver stalls at the 'wireless switch' screen. I flipped my switch off then on and Win7 went ahead and installed the default microsoft driver while the Dell driver screen just sat there. Same as the other guy experienced above with a different 370 driver.

I will go back to the R142181 driver, as it 'settled down' and hasn't been acting up.

IF YOU CHOOSE TO INSTALL THE TOSHIBA BLUE TOOTH STACK ON YOUR DELL SYSTEM YOU ARE DOING SO AT YOUR OWN SUCCESS OR PERIL, AND ASSUME ALL RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH INSTALLING THE TOSHIBA BLUE TOOTH STACK, INCLUDING FLASHING THE FIRMWARE ON YOUR DELL WIRELESS 350 BLUE TOOTH MODULE. THE ADVISE GIVEN BELOW IS GENERALLY RELIABLE BUT CANNOT BE TAKEN AS FACT, AND YOUR DELL WIRELESS 350 BLUE TOOTH MODULE MAY NOT IDENTIFY CORRECTLY WITH THE TOSHIBA BLUE TOOTH STACK. CONTINUING TO READ BEYOND THIS PURPLE TEXT IS YOUR AGREEMENT TO THESE TERMS.

EDIT: post re-written due to data loss.

Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth module and Windows 7

OK, so after going back to the R142181 driver from Dell (the newest available specifically for the 350 card - for Vista), it did settle down mostly, but still was generally unreliable and randomly dropped connections. Also, trying to install the newer Dell drivers, meant for the 355, 360, and 370 bluetooth modules went unsuccessfully for me.

After a little digging around many more forums, bing and google searches; I found a bit of hope. While I cannot prove this as true, it seems the 350 module (and only the 350) may have been manufactured for Dell by Toshiba. There wasn't a lot of information on people using the Toshiba bluetooth stacks, so I tried it myself.

I downloaded the latest Toshiba stack, and after un-installing R142181 "Vista Profile," I ran the Toshiba download. It installed successfully, and gave me no trouble. Looking at the details in the Toshiba bluetooth utility (by the way, is way more functional than what Dell provided) the module identifies correctly as the Dell 350 in the device manager. Edit add: In the Toshiba bluetooth utility, it identifies the manufacturer as Cambridge Silicon Radio.

On the Toshiba page, they explicitly point out in bold red that "These stacks are for TOSHIBA notebooks only!" I am assuming this is only a support disclaimer - because the Toshiba stack will RE-FLASH the module's firmware upon install. I have no idea if it will be possible to go backwards to Dell again - if they ever release a working driver.

None of that matters though, as the 350 module and the Toshiba utility are working flawlessly together in Windows 7 - for about a week and a half so far without an instance of a problem.

Found the spec sheet that Dell published in 2005 for this thing. Back then Dell was supporting Windows 2000 for this module. Attached.

no, I saw it. you just happened to post that on the day we lost all posts because of a database error and had to load the previous day's backup.

^^ Ha ha OK. I thought I was going batty. On an unrelated forum which I am a long-time member, we had a minor problem once where a moderator decided it was in their authority to delete posts because they didn't like them. That was my initial fear in this case. I will edit my post above to return it to what I originally had written.

Toshiba BT Stack works But....

it shows (on the icon in bottom right) that it is an evaluation version for 30 days. Has anyone seen this and/or know how to fix this.

By the way, new Toshiba stack is working beautifully for windows 7 (with lot more functionality).

Mine definitely does not say this, and I have had it for longer than thirty days. Could you post a screen shot of where it says this? Also, did you download from the link I provided? Lastly, do you have the Wireless 350 card?

My bluetooth software say 7.10.04 under 'about'. The latest posted on the toshiba page says 7.10.10 but it looks like minor updates.

There is a FAQ posted about this on the toshiba site. According to that if the stack recognizes the bluetooth module as non-toshiba the the stack will expire after 30 days. Apparently in my case with my 350 card it recognizes as a toshiba module.

Then we must ask this question - are all 350 modules identical?

I am attaching image of BT Stack software (look on bottom right). I got 7.10.10(T).

I am also including screen shot of my 'Device Manager' showing that i do have a Dell 350.

Hope this helps in finding cause of the issue and resolution.

Thanks !

I'm not sure what to tell ya, I don't see how if they are identical the stack would work different. Please do one more thing and post a screenshot of the options > general window and 'device details' screens. Does yours look identical to mine? It's posted above but I attached it here too.

Hi all:
I was having an issue with my Dell Inspiron 9300 Bluetooth (Dell 350 card) but on Windows XP SP3. I could pair it to my Jabra Halo stereo headset but while it would pair, there was no audio service.

Loading the Toshiba stack to replace the Dell stack solved the problem. Works like a champ.

also I want to migrate to Windows 7 but Dell does not have any Vista or Win7 drivers for this system. Most of the hardware works fine with the drives that are included with Windows 7 except for the Bluetooth module and the Alps Touch Pad.

Major cudos to M65 for the great post. Especially for providing the hyperlink to download the stack.