My headphones stopped pairing with my HP laptop which is running Windows 11 Home edition. It stopped working about 6 months ago and I got frustrated trying to figure it out so I just gave up; I’m trying to address it now but I’ve run out of ideas. I am able to connect the headphones to my Android phone without issue and the firmware on the headphones is up-to-date as well. When I try to pair them to my laptop, it says “pairing” but it won’t show up as a device to connect on the laptop, and eventually says “pairing failed”. There are no outstanding updates for Windows 11 or the Bluetooth 5 app. I’ve tried everything as far as ensuring the apps are all up-to-date, apps/devices have been turned on/off, the Bluetooth list on the headphones was cleared, and it just doesn’t show up in the device list to add to my laptop. Has anyone had this issue and resolved it?
Welcome to the Forum, @helenamancini!
I haven’t experienced the particular issue you describe, and the first thing I wonder about is whether any Bluetooth devices will currently connect with your laptop (mice, speakers, etc.). What you’ve detailed so far indicates that the Bluetooth connection is working between your headphones and phone, so it seems like the problem is with the PC, and I wonder if there’s an issue with a corrupt Bluetooth registry entry or something like that on the laptop. What kind of troubleshooting have you done on the Windows machine?
On Windows 10, if I tap the Windows logo/start button and start typing bluetooth
, one of the first search options is Find and fix problems with Bluetooth devices, so I’d be curious about the results of running that Bluetooth troubleshooter for starters.
Although you say that you’re current with Windows updates, I wonder about drivers. That’s something else you could check on HP’s Web site to see about available Bluetooth drivers in case you need to update or reinstall those (maybe to a previous version if everything was working well prior to 6 months ago).
The only other thing that immediately occurs to me is whether or not your headphones might be connected to two other devices when you attempt to connect them to the laptop. I mentioned some steps that could be taken to resolve that situation in another post a couple of months ago.
Thank you for the info. I agree, it is my laptop.
I had already run the BT troubleshooter and it said everything was fine and all drivers were up-to-date. I tried reverting to the generic bluetooth driver (from the Realtek driver), but that didn’t help.
I also had made sure that the headphones were not connected to my phone or other devices.
I tried some suggestions about setting the Services::BT services to Automatic - and found there was an issue with setting Bluetooth User Support Service to “Automatic” - I get “The parameter is incorrect.” I went to the Registry and updated BluetoothUserService “Start” to “2” and restarted my laptop; all are set to Automatic now - but it is still not picking up my headphones.
I was able to get it to pair with another laptop - which is something I should have tried earlier doh - I just hadn’t thought to do it because it had worked previously with no issues. So it is still an issue with my laptop, but now I know it is literally an issue with my laptop. Thank you for your help.
I’m glad you’ve been able to narrow it down to that PC and that you’ve determined that you can connect your Wyze Headphones to other devices. It seems like you’ve done some decent troubleshooting in trying to resolve the issue, and I still wonder if the troublesome laptop is allowing any Bluetooth devices to connect or if it’s just having issues with some things (like the Wyze Headphones) you try to connect to it.
Aside from what you’ve already done, if I was trying to tackle this problem on a PC then I still think I’d visit HP’s Web site and download drivers specific to that laptop (you might even be able to grab older versions if it’s a newer driver that’s causing the issue) and then delete all the Bluetooth items in Device Manager, install whatever drivers I got from HP, and reboot the machine. If necessary, you can have Device Manager “Scan for hardware changes” after that.
I suspect that you got a problematic driver somewhere and/or have corrupt data in a Bluetooth profile, so my inclination would be to try to get rid of that and then reinstall things (drivers) myself and/or have Windows try to rebuild a fresh copy of the profile/settings. I recall at times in the past (on older versions of Windows) having stubborn printer issues that I couldn’t get rid of by the typical means and being able to resolve those by definitively deleting those printers using wmic
commands from an administrator command prompt. I mention that because even in Windows 11 it’s possible to get to the management of Bluetooth devices from an administrator prompt with control printers
, so Windows is still logically grouping that stuff together somehow. I’ve never actually had a reason to try deleting Bluetooth data with WMIC, so I don’t even know if that’s possible, but it might be something to consider looking into if you can’t get Bluetooth working on this machine otherwise. I guess it all depends on how important it is for you to attach the headphones and how much time you want to spend on the problem.
Incidentally (and this might not be applicable to your situation), I get more use out of the audio cable that came with the headphones than I thought I would. It’s handy if I just want to use the headphones for listening (not for calls or anything) or if I’m using them with a PC that doesn’t have a Bluetooth adapter.