Most computer mice these days are Wireless. Most come with their own dongle that connects just with that mouse. My mouse was starting to fail and I was scouring the Internet to buy a new one. A computer mouse is essential in my work so I had to buy one yesterday and not from the Internet, I needed to buy it locally.
I saw a mouse that was bluetooth. It didn't need a dongle because it connected over normal bluetooth. I thought this was a great idea as it would cut down on the number of dongles I had connected to my PC.
Ironically, I would still need to attach a USB dongle for Bluetooth because my desktop PC did not have Bluetooth built in. This was fine because I could use it for multiple devices and I could also easily use the same mouse for my laptop which did have built in Bluetooth and this seemed the ideal solution.
I went to a local shop and bought the model I was after and got home and tried to connect it. I had bought a Bluetooth dongle some years ago and plugged that into my PC, set the mouse on discovery mode and went into Windows settings to search for devices to pair with.
However, nothing was found. Frustrated, I believed that the mouse I had bought was faulty. So I did some testing.
I went onto my smart-phone and clicked onto Bluetooth pairing. It immediately found the mouse and paired just as easily. Up to this point I didn't even know that it was possible to use a mouse with your phone but it worked a treat! So, I had established that the mouse was not faulty.
I then tried using the old Bluetooth dongle to connect to my smart-phone to test if the dongle was faulty. It found it and paired straight away without problem.
So the mouse is working and the Bluetooth dongle is working. But, no matter how many times I tried, I could not see the mouse on the list of devices to connect to. I then decided to Google my problem to see if I could find someone who had the same problem and thus the solution.
Most of the advice on Google was just the standard list of things I had already tried. Check the mouse's batteries, restart Bluetooth services, restart the PC. Remove the batteries from the mouse and wait 20 seconds and re-insert them.
None of these worked and I was still left with a mouse that could not be connected to my PC. I searched and searched on Google. In fact, I spent more than two hours searching Google and just as I was about to give up, I finally found the solution.
It turned out, my problem was caused by the fact that my Bluetooth dongle was a few years old. It was using Bluetooth version 2.0 which, it turns out, came out in 2004. In 2009, Bluetooth version 4.0 was released and included a new feature called BLE - Bluetooth Low Energy. This feature is perfect for devices like computer mice which can keep their batteries longer by using this Bluetooth feature.
So I bought a Bluetooth dongle that had BLE and hey presto: I found the mouse and paired it immediately without problem.
Now this solution might be abvious to some of you. You may be surprised that someone who has worked with computers for so many years did not know this already. My research showed me that many people have had the same problem and not found the solution. So I am definitely not the only one. I wrote this article in the hope that others who have this problem in future will stumble upon my article and get to the right answer mush sooner.
So, in answer to the question "Why Can't My Bluetooth Dongle See My Mouse?", make sure your Bluetooth dongle uses version 4.0 of Bluetooth or later and therefore has the BLE - Bluetooth Low Energy feature.