Here’s what happened when Windows 11 updated and Bluetooth suddenly became unavailable.
Sometimes, I really hate Windows. There, I said it.
I’m not getting into all the reasons why I have a love-hate relationship with this fervently-beloved operating system for fear of persecution. I think that coming close to being excommunicated by my colleagues, more specifically my fellow editors who are Windows diehards, is punishment enough for daring to even speak ill of it.
I’m also not about to drop myself into the middle of a war without ammunition, especially since I’m not overly passionate about the whole Mac vs Windows debate. But, to be blunt, the operating system makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes. And, as powerful as it is, you must admit; it has its share of stability problems, seemingly endless list of worthless old keys in its registry, and random issues that pop up for no apparent reason.
Case in point, this week when my gaming laptop, which I also use to test and review peripherals, just upped and decided to restart without warning or permission due to a small update I didn’t even know was happening. It cost me all the notes I had that day, which I had been typing up on the Notepad but forgot to save, as I’m used to the macOS Notes application that, by the way, blissfully auto-saves, sparing me from such catastrophes.
That isn’t even the worst of it. Windows 11 also, upon restart, decided that my laptop’s Bluetooth cannot sit at the popular table anymore, and it wasn’t going to bother making it available for me – an even bigger catastrophe (forgive my liberal use of the word), as both my current mechanical keyboard and my wireless mouse are using it to interface with my laptop.
And so followed an infuriating saga of me trying to restore Bluetooth connectivity to my device – essentially three or so hours of my life wasted.
