Bluetooth audio headset not recognized by Windows - won't pair/connect

Hi,

I've run into a problem recently with pairing my wireless Bose Soundsport headphones to my PC. Up until recently, the headphones paired and worked fine with my PC and iPhone simultaneously. I have 2 pairs of these exact headphones, and neither of them connect to this PC. However, they still connect to any other device.

The problem I am experiencing has persisted ever since I installed a graphics driver update via the GeForce Experience application (version 397.64, released on 05/09/2018). I updated this driver as a result of a few Memory_Management BSOD's and crashes while playing Fortnite.

Before anyone says, "Have you tried a troubleshooter / reinstall bluetooth drivers / make device discoverable / etc..." , please know that I've gone through the basic steps to solve problems like these. The only thing I haven't done is revert to a previous graphics driver - as I'd rather not do that. From a few hours of research, I haven't seen a problem similar to this.

What I Am Experiencing:
- I've paired and un-paired this device many times in the past. So I know the procedure.
- When I set the headphones to "Ready to Pair", the device name is expected to appear in the device list after clicking "Add Bluetooth or other device" in Windows Bluetooth settings.
- Instead, I only see an audio device called "Headphone" that, when clicked, will just say "Connecting..." indefinitely (see attached image).

In the past, the "Add Bluetooth or other device" would display the name of the device (Bose Soundsport), whereas now it only displays "Headphone". Why can my PC only see the headphones?

Solved!

Problem solved by shutting down PC and disconnecting the power.

Thank you thank you thank you for posting this! Shutting down, disconnecting power for 10 seconds, and rebooting worked for me too!

For the benefit of anyone dealing with this, hopefully my experience makes this fix even more searchable/discoverable:

I was tearing my hair out with the same issues - Bluetooth appeared to be working, Device Manager said my Bluetooth Adapter (Qualcomm Atheros QCA61x4A Bluetooth 4.1) was functioning properly, but I was unable to pair anything. Additionally, in the pairing screen, devices which had been previously listed by their model name ("Keychron K3", "WH-1000XM3", etc.) were now showing up as generic device names ("Audio Headset", "Keyboard", "Unknown Device"). Trying to pair with any of these devices would leave the pairing window hanging in a "Connecting..." state.

Searching for the queries below just led me to the millions of guides for:
- using the Windows Bluetooth Troubleshooter (which just reported that it fixed the issue by turning Bluetooth on)
- uninstalling and updating the Bluetooth device driver (tried different versions from Windows Update and motherboard manufacturer)
- and even rolling back Windows Updates and GPU driver updates

Throughout all of this, I must have restarted dozens of times, but didn't once think to disconnect power.

Searches that I wish had pointed me to this fix sooner:
"keychron not connecting bluetooth"
"windows update keychron not working"
"windows bluetooth troubleshooting"
"windows 10 bluetooth keyboard troubleshooting"
"windows 10 bluetooth adapter reset"
"windows 10 bluetooth device name not showing"
"windows update bluetooth not working"
"windows 10 bluetooth keyboard unable to connect"
"windows 10 bluetooth not showing device name pairing"
"windows 10 bluetooth not pairing"
"windows 10 bluetooth not pairing device name"

Glad I could help! Surprised this post is from 2018. For the past 4 years I’ve religiously been relying on power cycling my PC whenever I have weird problems like this and it has worked more times than it hasn’t. I’d definitely add it to your list of early troubleshooting steps for most issues!