[Win10 VM] Bluetooth Devices not able to reconnect after initial pairing.

[endless-cavalcade2674]

Hello,

Long time unraid user, posting because my "raiding" of these forums over the past year has failed to resolve a workable solution to my problem.

 

I'm having trouble getting a bluetooth dongle to connect reliably and automatically to paired devices on my Windows 10 VM.

 

I use a Realtek 5.3 USB bluetooth adapter (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CF5N5LBB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and pass it through to my VM:

The device is picked up in windows and can be used to pair bluetooth devices, but once the bluetooth device is disconnected once, it cannot reconnect. I need to "forget" the device and then reconnect it in order for it to be connected, but obviously this is not a long-term solution.

 

The reason that I have an XBox Controller Dongle is that it independently pairs with my XBox controller, which circumvents this problem. Since the connection is managed in the hardware of the USB device rather than via windows, it connects reliably. 

 

I was wondering if anyone had any advice on getting a Bluetooth dongle to connect reliably and automatically in a Windows 10 VM. 

Here is what I have tried so far:

1. [solved] BT dongle to pass through to win10: I have no "energy management" tab available in my device manager for my bluetooth dongle. https://www.thewindowsclub.com/power-management-tab-is-missing lead me to add a registry key to enable the tab, which did not work. 
2. Updated my bluetooth driver automatically to a 2023 driver version from a 2006 generic driver.
3. Read everything in the forums that I could find about bluetooth on a VM. Unfortunately, almost all posts are about passing through integrated wireless, which I have been circumventing entirely by using a dongle and binding it to the VM. 

I'd really appreciate some help figuring this out. I use this VM as a Steam remote streaming machine, and having the ability to connect a bluetooth keyboard reliably is going to be a huge boon for completing tasks that need it.

 

It's been a while since I set up this VM, but I can hop into my setup documentation and relate stuff as required. I've bound a few IOMMU groups to the VM using guides on the forums, to attach a GPU to the VM and one bank of USB ports, but I don't directly bind the group that the USB Bluetooth Dongle is on:

Edited June 24 by endless-cavalcade2674
improved clarity of problem statement, typo fixing, more spacing for readability.