Abandoned – Please visit http://www.gamerheaven.ca

So after a couple days of battling my laptop I finally figured out how to internet tether using bluetooth and my laptop.

My Tech specs for this project:

Acer Aspire 5100, iPhone 3G, Windows 7 RC

It began with my brother’s computer dying. He had an acer aspire laptop 5110, he also told me it had built in bluetooth… so I figured, take that adapter out and bing bang boom, I can teather while on the road without even taking my phone out of it’s case and without using my cable.

Well this was easier said than done. The first issue was taking apart my brother’s computer and locating the adapter. I came across the basics.. Ram, Hard Drive, CPU, Cooling units… It wasnt until the entire system was taken apart that I found the small treasure I was searching for. The Acer Bluetooth Module

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After I got where this was, I came to the conclusion that I would have to do the same thing to my own laptop, take the entire thing apart (aside from the screen) to add this little baby. Well the operation went well, but I wasn’t confident that I connected the trackpad back up correctly. Turned the system on and success.. it booted and so did windows, but like i suspected. The track pad was now dead…. so i grabbed a USB mouse to  make sure the system worked then to test the newly inserted bluetooth radio. The front blue light turned on now and it seemed like it was working, but it simply wouldn’t install! I tried to get the official driver from acer, but it kept giving me messages like “this driver is intended for windows xp” or “intended for windows vista”  So after some uneventful searching Windows 7 actually pointed me in the right direction (I know this is also what Vista includes) ask the system to fix problems and it will usually find the correct driver page on the internet.

click here if you need the new drivers yourself

So now the device was installing correctly and everything was looking great, besides the lack of a mouse that was. The options spun in my head “get a bluetooth mouse, get a cheap small USB mouse, open the system up again”. After the debating (and the drivers being set up) I went to pair my iPhone with the laptop… they detected one another but didn’t work properly… I tried a couple times and no dice. Finally I gave up and went to bed.

This morning, I cracked open the laptop again… Looked over the parts of my brother’s broken computer and took the processor and battery and trackpad cable for myself. I installed the new processor (an AMD x2 instead of my laptop’s regular processor) and the new cable for the trackpad. Put it all back together again and partally expected it not to turn on. But surprize, the BIOS showed me the new processor took without a hitch. Then the other test… windows booted and YES the trackpad worked again!

Now at this point I knew the bluetooth radio worked fine. I was able to pair my girlfriend’s LG neon to it and play her music through the PC speakers. I was able to pair my bluetooth headset as well (besides the fact the sound plays very cut off……pretty……much……like…….this, but that issue I havnt figured out)

So It boiled down to an issue with the bluetooth driver, windows 7 or the iPhone. Well I found the solution about 20 minutes ago and here it is:

first,double click on the bluetooth icon on your taskbar:

Then right click on your iPhone (you should see it’s name very clearly)

go to the services tab, de-select all the options. Hit Apply then Hit OK

Then choose “connect using – access point”

If everything is ok you should see this message pop up:

Now on the iPhone side of things:

First turn on bluetooth, make sure your laptop’s name appears in the selections of devices. You will not be able to connect from the computer to the iPhone only the other way around, it will try to connect then always say “not connected”:

However, if the success message appears on your PC then this should happen all at once:

And as you may have quessed your laptop is connected through your iPhone to your 3G network! If there is anything missing or you are curious about how to pair your iPhone with your computer, send me an email: thetechcanuck@gmail.com and I’ll try my best to help you out!

Now that I finally got it all working, I think I can relax.