Dear Abby,

I have a mid-level manager in a remote office who insists on using Sony CF-500 headphones with his Lenovo ThinkPad. We have company headsets, but he wants to use those specifically, and have them output high bitrate stereo (he listens to Spotify on his work comp) and still be useable as a mic for meetings as well.

However, they just keep disappearing, seemingly at random intervals.

Things I've tried, and that have worked (for 24 hours up to a week before the fixes stop working)

1. Update all Bluetooth drivers. Rolling them back generic drivers fixed the problem (temporarily)

2. Un-reinstall the devices, get drivers recommended by Sony (doesn't work)

3. Updated the Lenovo Firmware, including BIOS (this pulled up a new set of drivers that worked for a week)

4. Dis/re-enabling hands phone telephony (has to be enabled so he can use the mic)

5. Rolled back the drivers to generic ones that work, set a Local Group Policy to prevent the domain group policy/windows updates from updating those specific Bluetooth drivers (either domain GPO still pushes it anyway, or Windows updates still update them anyway)

6. In Service Manager, stop and manually start all Bluetooth services (including the support services)

Is there any way to make these changes persistent? I'm not joking when I say I've spent at least 4 hours RDP'd into this guys system trying to get those damn things to work... and he's just IM'd me asking me to go back in and fix it again because it stopped working.

Or any advice I guess, at this point should I just be telling him there's not much else I can do and recommend that he use the company headset he has?

• NewandConfused

(PS: I know I've been posting here quite a bit, honestly way and above Stack Overflow, MS community etc. this is the most positive, knowledgeable community I've found so far. Thank you to everyone who is a part of it and who takes the time to help out all the ankle biters like me!)