This has been the case since it came out, and it has got only slightly better over the years.
I spent a day or two playing around with the firewall settings, to stop win8 downloading a few hundred k over the satellite phone connection.
Then, immediately before a flight today, I found the tablet would not connect to the bluetooth GPS.
Later, I found that the windoze firewall also stops bluetooth connections!
And when the tablet tried to connect to the bluetooth GPS, and got blocked by the firewall, something got corrupted and now there is no way to connect to the GPS. Only the internal GPS works, but that e.g. doesn’t show the track, so the aeroplane symbol always points straight up even if you are flying east…
I have an image backup from February, but that needs a boot CD, which cannot be created – error 0×80070057 (yes, all over the internet). So, no way out of this one, that I can see.
My 2005 LS800 tablet still works, so I am going to cut my losses on the Lenovo, wipe it, stick it on Ebay, and go back to the LS800. I might buy an Ipad Mini purely for displaying PDF charts – it isn’t any good for anything else that I need to do.
The number of man-years wasted sorting out bluetooth problems must far exceed the number of man-years people have spent writing drivers for it. And its stupid “COM ports” which don’t seem to relate to anything in reality.
Isn’t it more of a Windows problem than a Bluetooth problem? All that firewall and COM port stuff is Windows-related surely? I’ve been using a Bluetooth mouse for a few years without ever having an issue. When I get in the car my phone connects to the car, every time, without fail, without pushing any buttons on anything. It took less than a minute to set it up and it works perfectly.
That LS800 of yours will outlive us all!
Declaring defeat to Windows 8 is a bit embarrassing, isn’t it? 
Don’t you have access to a Windows savvy person? Surely this can be solved and Bluetooth works fine in general. This COM port orgy is a Windows thing, it reserves those ports for all types of devices that could be connected through its installed drivers. The Windows firewall is an IP firewall, it would only block Bluetooth networking devices (PAN).
It’s very tempting to quit while one is still losing, but I might try reinstalling the BT drivers.
BT works in other respects e.g. connecting to the Nokia phone (for internet access) so the hardware isn’t broken. What seems to be happening is that one can find a device but connecting to it crashes the unit.
It’s also worrying that one cannot image backup the device… the file backup works but most of the files won’t restore because the O/S locks them – kind of totally useless really! I had earlier tried Trueimage 13 and it caused trouble, with loads of popups popping up.
I have to say under Android and iOS I don’t find Bluetooth to be that problematic. Peter, could it be worth changing technological epochs sometime soon? And I don’t include windows 8 in the current epoch!
What exactly are you using the tablet for?
OK, why not try moving to Rocketroute and SD on an android tablet? Other than your moving topographical map, I can’t see what you would miss out on. Alternatively the iPad route.
I can only see making legacy tech work getting harder for you. Not saying this is fair or a good thing but it is reality.
There is no current Ipad solution which gives proper VFR charts as a moving map, all the way down to Greece. And topo data is needed to overfly e.g. the Alps above an overcast.
Android doesn’t support dial-up networking for the satphone.
There are solutions, involving wifi, and Ozi does run on Android, but it’s another k or two in hardware to get the satphone solution.
but it is reality.
No it isn’t reality. You can get IT hassle at any level you play at. An Ipad (we have one at home too) gets around bluetooth compatibility issues simply by not connecting to almost everything… that’s the Steve Jobs approach, with everybody else being an “edge case”. The modern satphone solution is over wifi but it’s easy to get issues there. Loads of routers don’t/didn’t work with IOS devices, due to Apple’s habit of discarding the DHCP lease every 10 seconds or so (in some versions) for the best “mobile user experience”.
Every technological approach has a finite life, because of encroaching compatibility issues somewhere along the line which eventually force it to be discarded and replaced. All that changes is that different people attach a different value to keeping old stuff going. In aviation, the main difference is that not many pilots who bought the kit for a few k are going to go public with the subsequent problems, in the same forum, under the same persona And if the kit is fixed they probably never will because almost everybody is planning to sell their plane eventually.
One thing I am going to look into, finally, is Deep Freeze. You get a fresh copy of the config at every bootup.
Would one of these help?
http://www.redportglobal.com/marine-satellite-internet-firewall-routers/optimizer-satellite-firewall-and-wi-fi-hotspot/
They’re $150 a will turn any USB-connected sat phone in to a wifi device, and include a firewall so you could configure it to stop devices trying to ping home, download 20Gb of software updates, etc.
I solved it, by reinstalling the BT driver (there is a Feb 2014 version out 
) and by disabling the firewall for anything to do with BT.
This time I am going to make a proper image backup
That product, David, is really interesting. Actually I have seen them before. There are at least two of those firms, making this stuff mainly for the boating scene. I didn’t realise they were just $150 though. I am checking with them which phones it supports.
However, it looks like I am back in action, and with the Lenovo tablet I can continue to be a cheapskate and use my 7100 phone
