Windows 7 Devices and Printers Hangs or Won’t Open?

Chances are it’s because of one setting

I ran into an annoying problem on my Windows 7 virtual machine the other day when I tried to openDevices and Printersfrom the Start Menu.

Instead of normally loading up with a list of Devices and Printers and Faxes, it kept hanging and nothing would load. It was just a blank screen like shown below:

Grrrr. It was working fine a few days earlier, so I could not figure out what had changed. Whenever something like this happens, I always think of a few things. Did I install any new Windows updates? Those are notorious for screwing things up all the time!

That wasn’t the case, so then I checked if I had installed any new drivers or updated any existing drivers on my PC, but that wasn’t the case either. I hadn’t installed any new hardware and didn’t update anything. I was running out of options at this point.

Then I remembered something! I had turned off Bluetooth on my computer a few days back because I didn’t think I needed it. After doing some Googling, I realized that was the problem! For some strange reason, you have to turn on the Bluetooth service and/or the Bluetooth Support service. To do this, you need to go to Start, type in services and click onServices.

For some reason my service was set toManualand was not even started. I started it and then set it toAutomatic.

To change it to Automatic, right-click on the service and chooseProperties. Then underStartup TypechooseAutomatic.

That’s it! Now if you go back to Devices and Printers, it should look something like this:

If you’re Devices and Printers window is still not loading or is hanging, post a comment here and we’ll try to help! Enjoy!

Founder of Help Desk Geek and managing editor. He began blogging in 2007 and quit his job in 2010 to blog full-time. He has over 15 years of industry experience in IT and holds several technical certifications.Read Aseem’s Full Bio

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Windows 7 Devices and Printers Hangs or Won’t Open?#