I’ve gotten a number of calls from clients recently where a Windows update uninstalled the Bluetooth drivers, making their Bluetooth mouse and keyboard unusable.
I’ve even had a few where an update uninstalled the WiFi drivers so they couldn’t even download the drivers without a wired network connection.
Windows 10 & 11comes pre-packaged with generic wifi and bluetooth drivers that work with the vast majority of the common chipsets.
If a device has forgotten which driver it has, re-aasining the generic driver should be enough to get you operational enough to go grab any advanced drivers for extended device functionality.
Also, as an FYI, I had a fleet (~150) of decommissioned machines (probabaly 20-30 different model over 5 makes) I was converting into a Linux(Deb) distrubuted node automation farm. The amount of times I had to go find drivers (network interfaces were the cost common) that supported the hardware that Linux didn’t have default driver support for was prevelant. That was a very long 2 weeks.
that supported the hardware that Linux didn’t have default driver support for
Curious as to which distro you were using?
(Yeah, I know, but please, humor me.)