Win10 wiping out Fitbit BT drivers
 

A few years ago my FIL and I bought the same model of Samsung Notebook PC and they came working with Win8. Nearly a couple of years ago we bought my FIL a Fitbit Charge2 and were stunned to find that it didn't communicate with Win8 PCs either by the charging cradle USB cable or by BlueTooth (which the PC hardware has built in. Apparently you need to spend extra on a BT dongle to allow the two to talk to each other. As it happened the FIL was tempted to grab a free Win10 upgrade a few weeks before his Fitbit came on the scene. Things were looking up, Fitbit registered, updated and tracking his every activity.

Things trundled along smoothly until November last when the Fitbit stopped talking to the PC. He was able to charge it but could not download his activity data. Thinking that the Fitbit was at fault FIL took it back to the place where it was bought from and they replaced it FOC. The Charge2 is a discontinued model but it has been replaced by the Charge3 device at the same price so he got a free upgrade out of the situation. Hurrah!

The joy was short lived as, on getting home, he found that the Charge3 won't talk to his PC either. A quick browse of the net showed that this is not an isolated case, it seems that many folk are having the problem and it is thought to be due to a Win10 upgrade, which you can't reject, which messes up the BT drivers in the same way that it screws up printer drivers. The help desk at Fitbit has tried to help but they are saying to find another BT equiped device to talk to the tracker! Very helpful, NOT. FIL has just upgraded his ancient phone to a better not smart phone and is not looking to change that again soon. Having said that I found that my Sammy S3 phone used to talk to my Fitbit but it's OS got to the point that it didn't handle the modern internet security protocols and it stopped doing the biz.

Both items were supplied by the same Never Knowingly Undersold store so FIL is going to go in to see their techy people armed with the two items. I don't hold out much hope but it might stop him bugging me with it!

Have any of you good people found a solution to this issue?

Thanks,

Rans6..................

Have you looked at the two fitbit pages linked from here?
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...b-5270b012a562

You need a fitbit account to open them and I don't have such a thing:-)

I presume that you have checked the Control Panel/Device Manager page for device errors?

And run sfc /scannow in a Command window As Administrator to check the integrity of the Windows files?

Always worth a look at the Event Viewer too especially for the times when relevant actions have been carried out. System log mostly, but worth checking Application log too.

Some info on a known BT issue here but I can't see fitbit getting into that hole?
https://www.techradar.com/news/bluet...s-might-be-why

We have been all over the Fitbit forums and not found a solution so we called their helpline. I have not had access to the PC as FIL lives some way away and I have not been over there for a while. I have helped as much as I can by phone but FIL is not the most computer literate person. Anyway, FIL took both devices into the techy folk at JL and they took it into their back room and somewhat later they came out and are now talking to each other. FIL could not explain what they did but he thought that it was more than just messing with the software......

Rans6............