HowTo

This HowTo shall solve problems by using Bluetooth USB dongles under Windows XP SP2 (or above) that are officially not supported by the built-in Bluetooth driver. However, most chipsets are produced by the same company using different labels. So most of them are supported. The following instructions should solve this issue for the most devices. Anyway, there may be some devices which will not work with this solution and will still need their proprietary driver.

Getting the MS Bluetooth stack work

deinstall all 3rd party drivers & software
find the *.inf file which contains the 3rd party driver and delete it
now (if the bluetooth dongle is supported by SP2) the generic driver schould be loaded but there will be no "My Bluetooth Places" available in "My Computer" because this is a Widcomm hack to pretend to be plugged in the operating system.
if Windows XP SP2 was properly installed and the driver should not be loaded, deinstall it and reinstall it again!
if Windows XP SP2 was not installed, install it!
now everything should be working

Get unsupported BT devices work with the MS Bluetooth stack

be sure that the MS Bluetooth driver (XP SP2) is installed!
plug in your Bluetooth stick
if it is not supported by the driver take a look at START->Settings->ControlPanel->System->Hardware->DeviceManager
a device with a question mark will be there, click onto it and open the tab details, there you will find the VID and PID of the stick. Remember them!
open the file C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386\bth.inf
in the device section are the supported Bluetooth devices with their VID & PID listed
just pick an existing manufactor and enter below:

Skylab Mobilesystems stick 1=BthUsb, USB\Vid_1131&Pid_1001

Skylab Mobilesystems stick 2=BthUsb, USB\Vid_1131&Pid_1001&Rev_0373

The VID and PID (and sometimes the Revision too) must be changed.
save the file and close it
after removing and plugging in again the stick should be recognized as a supported one
to install the driver follow the upcoming dialog and select directly the C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386\bth.inf as the driver for this device
after the driver installation everything shoeld work! ;-)

[2005-04] Patrick Kosiol - contact[AT]patrick-kosiol[DOT]de