When Gremlins Attack!


Background:  My home office has three computers.  Two desktops, both running Windows 11 (one is my gaming rig and the other is office-issued), and the third is a MacBook Air.  The Windows boxes prompted me for a software update.  So, the dutiful cybersecurity in me immediately approved the patches.  The work desktop prompted me for three updates, while my gaming computer prompted me to restart because the updates had already been downloaded.

Two out of three updates on the work computer ran without a hitch but one did not continue. I left it as it is and will just let the office tech deal with next week.  

Now, as for my gaming rig, all the updates appear to have been applied, but it affected the Bluetooth driver.  The connection to the Bluetooth speaker I use with it stopped working, so I checked its Device Manager.  Device Manager reported an error with the Bluetooth device, so this is what I did to try and fix it:
  • I hunted down the drivers for its CPU (it is running Ryzen 7) and installed the updated drivers.  I restarted the machine, but Bluetooth still didn't work.
  • Since it is running an Intel Bluetooth module, I downloaded and updated the drivers directly from Intel.  It still didn't work!
  • I was almost ready to do a factory reset when I remembered that this PC has a convenient BIOS reset button.  I initiated a BIOS reset, et viola -- Bluetooth started working again!
While all these are going on, my MacBook Air was chugging along just fine.  I guess the gremlins are picky on what computers to attack today

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