How to completely remove a Bluetooth device from Win 10?

xzion said:

wouldn't normally necro a thread but i spent two weeks trawling the internet trying to sort this out and this thread is pretty high up on the search rankings, hopefully can help someone.

My symptoms:
- Previously working bluetooth speaker (UE BOOM 2 in my case) stops connecting
- Windows 10 'Bluetooth and other devices' menu shows the device as Paired
- Pressing connect makes it attempt to connect but fails then it goes back to Paired
- Remove device hides the device from the menu, but as soon as you turn bluetooth on and off, or restart the computer, the device comes back
- You pull your hair out.

Solution that worked for me after much, much unsuccessful internet trawling and one system restore:
- Download this 7 year old command line bluetooth toolset: Bluetooth command line tools - work with bluetooth from the command line
- Install it, make sure you enable the option to "Add Bluetooth Command Line Tools directory to path"
- Open Powershell
- Put your device that isn't working properly into pairing mode
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING COMMAND WILL UNPAIR ALL BLUETOOTH DEVICES
- type in "btpair -u"
- Boom, all of a sudden Windows asks me if I want to allow pairing to my device that isn't working
- Hit yes, successfully connected again
- Cry tears of joy

God I hope that helps someone else.

i made an account just to reply this: it worked, god bless your soul

KeithM said:

There's a similar long-running discussion in the Microsoft communities that I recently came across: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...5-93e96c47f7ff
Working from the signature provided by LFLFM, I came uip the following PowerShell code, which removes devices that have paired incorrectly so the can be re-paired. Just copy & paste into PowerShell -- no downloads required!

Code:

$Source = @"
   [DllImport("BluetoothAPIs.dll", SetLastError = true, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
   [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)]
   static extern UInt32 BluetoothRemoveDevice(IntPtr pAddress);

   public static UInt32 Unpair(UInt64 BTAddress) {
      GCHandle pinnedAddr = GCHandle.Alloc(BTAddress, GCHandleType.Pinned);
      IntPtr pAddress     = pinnedAddr.AddrOfPinnedObject();

      UInt32 result       = BluetoothRemoveDevice(pAddress);
      pinnedAddr.Free();
      return result;
   }
"@

Function Get-BTDevice {
    Get-PnpDevice -class Bluetooth |
      ?{$_.HardwareID -match 'DEV_'} |
         select Status, Class, FriendlyName, HardwareID,
            # Extract device address from HardwareID
            @{N='Address';E={[uInt64]('0x{0}' -f $_.HardwareID[0].Substring(12))}}
}

################## Execution Begins Here ################

$BTR       = Add-Type -MemberDefinition $Source -Name "BTRemover"  -Namespace "BStuff" -PassThru
$BTDevices = @(Get-BTDevice) # Force array if null or single item
Do {
   If ($BTDevices.Count) {
      "`n******** Bluetooth Devices ********`n" | Write-Host
      For ($i=0; $i -lt $BTDevices.Count; $i++) {
         ('{0,5} - {1}' -f ($i+1), $BTDevices[$i].FriendlyName) | Write-Host
      }
      $selected = Read-Host "`nSelect a device to remove (0 to Exit)"
      If ([int]$selected -in 1..$BTDevices.Count) {
         'Removing device: {0}' -f $BTDevices[$Selected-1].FriendlyName | Write-Host
         $Result = $BTR::Unpair($BTDevices[$Selected-1].Address)
         If (!$Result) {"Device removed successfully." | Write-Host}
         Else {"Sorry, an error occured." | Write-Host}
      }
   }
   Else {
      "`n********* No devices foundd ********" | Write-Host
   }
} While (($BTDevices = @(Get-BTDevice)) -and [int]$selected)

Keith

I too had to create an account, just to say thank you. This is a gift that clearly just keeps on giving.

A big "thank you" xzion. I had a BT headphones that always showed up "paired" but would not connect. However, I didn't want to go through unpairing everything as I had almost 50 devices collected over the years. So I first ran the command "btdiscovery -s" and got the BT address for the headphones. Then I ran "btpair -u -b[DEVICE_ADDRESS]" which only (finally) unpaired the offending device. I then used the normal pairing process and it paired and connected and now appeared in the drop down list in the sound devices for play and record. This worked GREAT and no need to unpair everything. Note that when you run "btdiscovery -s" you have to wait a minute for the command to complete and populate the list.

xzion said:

wouldn't normally necro a thread but i spent two weeks trawling the internet trying to sort this out and this thread is pretty high up on the search rankings, hopefully can help someone.

My symptoms:
- Previously working bluetooth speaker (UE BOOM 2 in my case) stops connecting
- Windows 10 'Bluetooth and other devices' menu shows the device as Paired
- Pressing connect makes it attempt to connect but fails then it goes back to Paired
- Remove device hides the device from the menu, but as soon as you turn bluetooth on and off, or restart the computer, the device comes back
- You pull your hair out.

Solution that worked for me after much, much unsuccessful internet trawling and one system restore:
- Download this 7 year old command line bluetooth toolset: Bluetooth command line tools - work with bluetooth from the command line
- Install it, make sure you enable the option to "Add Bluetooth Command Line Tools directory to path"
- Open Powershell
- Put your device that isn't working properly into pairing mode
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING COMMAND WILL UNPAIR ALL BLUETOOTH DEVICES
- type in "btpair -u"
- Boom, all of a sudden Windows asks me if I want to allow pairing to my device that isn't working
- Hit yes, successfully connected again
- Cry tears of joy

God I hope that helps someone else.

HOLY JESUS I'VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR 2 YEARS.
!! THANK YOU !!

Adding a bunch of keywords so this will hopefully get some results on google.

Bluetooth device wont unpair windows 11 windows 10 cant remove bluetooth device
bluetooth speaker automatically reinstalls
cant remove bluetooth device from device manager
cant pair bluetooth device after bad install
bluetooth didnt install correctly and cant connect even though paired