How can I tell which Bluetooth stack my Windows computer is using?

Question

I am a developer and need to support a broad a range of Bluetooth stacks as possible for an application. I need to support

• Microsoft
• Broadcom
• Toshiba
• Any others I don't know about

however finding out what drivers are being used is tricky.

I have done the usual check for the driver in Device Manager but I get conflicting results. For example under the Bluetooth branch the Bluetooth dongle driver is provided by Broadcom, but the connected device (a Bluetooth serial device) has the driver provided by Microsoft. Under the virtual COM port the device driver is also provided by Microsoft.

I have also checked this form post which suggests if the Broadcom stack is installed I should find some .dlls named BtSdkCE30.dll or BtSdkCE50.dll in my Windows folder but no such .dlls exist (although the post was relating to PDA mobile devices).

Am I using the Broadcom drivers or not? I am using Windows 10 but need to support down to Vista.

Answer 1

The best way to determine which Bluetooth drivers are installed is to go through the vendor sdk (C++) which provides functions to determine the stack version that is installed.

For example the Broadcomm sdk contains a function called: getBTWVersion If it fails its means the broadcomm stack is not installed. You can get the Bluetooth SDK from Broadcomm

You can also get the Toshiba Bluetooth stack by filling the request form in the Toshiba site.

Good luck.

Answer 2

Have a look at BlueCove.org: They say to:

• Open the Control Panel
• Open "System"
• Click in the "Hardware" tab.
• Click on "Device Manager"
• Browse to your Bluetooth device
• Right click and select "Properties"
• Click on "Driver" tab.