Bluetooth stopped working? The 6 checks, in order
Your headphones were fine yesterday. Today: silence, and no message explaining anything. Before you pay anyone, run these six checks — they follow Microsoft's own published sequence, and they fix the great majority of Bluetooth sulks.
- Run the built-in helper. Open the Get Help app and run the Bluetooth troubleshooter. It restarts the behind-the-scenes machinery safely.
- Bluetooth on? Device awake and pairing? Settings → Bluetooth & devices — confirm the switch is on. Put the device in pairing mode (hold its power button until it blinks) and hold it close to the computer. A device paired to your phone will happily ignore your computer.
- Remove it, then add it again. In the same Settings page, remove the device and add it fresh. Most repeat failures are a stale connection, and this is the broom.
- Check the battery. The quietest cause in the world. Charge it or swap the battery before suspecting anything fancier.
- Turn Bluetooth off, count to ten, turn it on. Yes, really — radios, like people, sometimes just need a moment.
- Check Windows Update, then restart. Settings → Windows Update; connection fixes often arrive there. Then a full restart, not a sleep.
Why "in order" matters
Each check rules out a layer, cheapest first — which is exactly how a good technician works, and exactly why the order is worth having in writing. At the Geek Squad counter, this was a minutes-long fix; our founder's account of doing it free — and being reprimanded because it could have been sold — is on the home page. The full explanation of what's happening when the invisible wire breaks: Bluetooth, explained.
And if the checks become a habit you'd rather hand off: Geek Doctor runs them with you, in this order, says what it found at each step, and writes it in its notebook — so the second time it happens, you start from the answer.