12" Powerbook G4 - Bluetooth Disappeared

[minor_threat]

Hi,

I've had this titanium powerbook for about 12 months now. When I first bought it bluetooth worked fine but I didn't have a real use for it. Now I have no bluetooth functionality at all and a real need for it! The only difference between then and now are the various OS X software updates that have been issued - could they have somehow disabled bluetooth? Is there a way that I can reinstall it? I can't find an answer anywhere else (google guru has failed me and apple's website has no tech info on this strange occurrance) so any help will be very much appreciated. Cheers, MT.

 

[DeltaMac]

If you have a titanium G4, then there is no internal BlueTooth, just an external USB dongle for blueTooth, so I'm guessing you have an Aluminum G4, with factory BlueTooth.
If you actually have one of the bluetooth dongles, then yes, one of the updates could have disabled the BlueTooth dongle. I lost one to a firmware update a few months ago. The dongle cannot be fixed.

Check in your System Preferences. If the bluetooth pref pane is visible, then the bluetooth hardware is detected (doesn't mean it works, just detected) If the hardware is not detected, then an internal connector has come loose, or the BlueTooth board has failed, or the logic board is faulty.