late 2013 iMac with failing bluetooth problems

[Macky-Mac]

I have a late 21.5" 2013 iMac with a 1TB SATA drive running on Mojave (updated to Mojave about 9 months ago)

I'm having a problem with bluetooth disconnecting from my mouse (and occasionally the keyboard too) at random moments. This has happened randomly during the past couple of years. In the past it would reconnect fairly quickly after clicking the mouse several times.

This has been going on for a year or two, but recently it's been happening much more frequently, and the reconnect doesn't happen as quickly as it used to. I've even had to plug in a wired mouse to use briefly before bluetooth reconnects.

I've also recently had the spinning beach ball thing much more often than I ever used to. It happens particularly when loading a web page or scrolling thru some document.

Is there such a thing as bluetooth hardware failing? Or is this a sign of other upcoming problems, like perhaps impending hard drive failure?

 

[SketchyClown]

HD failing can definitely cause symptoms like this. Grab DriveDX program and see what it says about your HDD.

 

[Fishrrman]

My suggestions:

Get an EXTERNAL USB3 SSD. 1tb in size would be good.
Connect it, and set it up to be the "new boot drive".
The iMac will boot and run considerably FASTER using the external drive.

The easiest way to move stuff over is to use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to "clone" the contents of the internal drive to the external SSD.

Both CCC and SD are FREE to download and use for 30 days -- this will cost you nothing.

RE the bluetooth issues:

Get a 3rd-party USB bluetooth adapter. There are many available, just choose carefully so you buy one that is compatible with the Mac OS (read the user reviews from Mac owners).

Also, get a USB3 "extension cable" like this:

Amazon.com: Usb3 Extension 3ft

Amazon.com: usb3 extension 3ft

www.amazon.com

Plug the "extension cable" into the Mac, and plug the bt adapter into the "far end". Now, "loop it around" so that the bt adapter is "closer to" your bt devices.

There may be some "software setup considerations" that will make such a setup work very well.

 

[Macky-Mac]

My suggestions:

Get an EXTERNAL USB3 SSD. 1tb in size would be good.
Connect it, and set it up to be the "new boot drive".
The iMac will boot and run considerably FASTER using the external drive....

I tried doing this earlier in the year. I bought a Samsung T5, read a number of threads here discussing how to do it, plus I watched several youtube videos with instructions......then installed Mojave on the drive.....but the iMac just wouldn't boot from it. It read and writes to the drive (now in use as yet another backup drive) but it wouldn't boot no matter what method I tried......lol

Unfortunately I have some legacy 32 bit software that I still need so I'm going to try again. I have another T5 on order and will try again.

 

[Fishrrman]

"I bought a Samsung T5, read a number of threads here discussing how to do it, plus I watched several youtube videos with instructions......then installed Mojave on the drive.....but the iMac just wouldn't boot from it."

Then you did something wrong.
In 34 years of being a Mac user, I have NEVER encountered a Macintosh that could not be booted from an external drive...

 

[Macky-Mac]

"I bought a Samsung T5, read a number of threads here discussing how to do it, plus I watched several youtube videos with instructions......then installed Mojave on the drive.....but the iMac just wouldn't boot from it."

Then you did something wrong.
In 34 years of being a Mac user, I have NEVER encountered a Macintosh that could not be booted from an external drive...

Sure, quite likely I did something wrong, or the external had some problem, but it doesn't matter. I'm going to give it another try with another drive.

I'd intended to do the whole process over again with the first drive, but before I got around to it, I started using it for other things

 

[SketchyClown]

Did you get DriveDX and see what it reports about your HDD? The free trial version will work for this.

I would do this before creating a shopping list of things to buy like bluetooth dongles suggested above that you may not even need to buy since the bluetooth module is likely not malfunctioning.

Every iMac I have owned (and that's a few now) the spinner HDD has died every time. Apple used subpar drives in these units. When the drive is dying, you'll have excess beachballing and the mouse/keyboard can stop responding or "freeze" intermittently appearing like a loss of connection.

Just make sure you have your critical files backed up.

If the HDD is the culprit & you'd like to keep the unit and just fix what is wrong, iFixit offers good tutorials to CAREFULLY take apart your iMac and replace the spinner with a SSD. It's easier than you think.

 

[Macky-Mac]

Did you get DriveDX and see what it reports about your HDD? The free trial version will work for this.

I would do this before creating a shopping list of things to buy like bluetooth dongles suggested above that you may not even need to buy since the bluetooth module is likely not malfunctioning.

Every iMac I have owned (and that's a few now) the spinner HDD has died every time. Apple used subpar drives in these units. When the drive is dying, you'll have excess beachballing and the mouse/keyboard can stop responding or "freeze" intermittently appearing like a loss of connection.

Just make sure you have your critical files backed up.

If the HDD is the culprit & you'd like to keep the unit and just fix what is wrong, iFixit offers good tutorials to CAREFULLY take apart your iMac and replace the spinner with a SSD. It's easier than you think.

I haven't downloaded DriveDX yet but since there's a free trial time period, I definitely will.

My current plan is to try again to get an SSD external drive set up as the boot drive. I'd like the extra speed in addition to solving the current trouble.

The goal is to keep this iMac functioning as a second computer for a year or two while I transition software to the Apple Silicon era. I am somewhat caught by still needing some old legacy software in the short term. And if it turns out that there is actually something wrong with the bluetooth module, I'll just use one of my wired mice and keyboards.

 

[Macky-Mac]

"I bought a Samsung T5, read a number of threads here discussing how to do it, plus I watched several youtube videos with instructions......then installed Mojave on the drive.....but the iMac just wouldn't boot from it."

Then you did something wrong.
In 34 years of being a Mac user, I have NEVER encountered a Macintosh that could not be booted from an external drive...

indeed, it should work....it's really not difficult and I've done it in the past....but a second attempt with a different drive has now failed.

despite using CCC to copy over everything to the external and selecting the external drive in the startup drive panel, it's continuing to boot with the internal drive...

edit;
but after a couple of additional restarts that failed to boot on the external drive followed by everything freezing up when I opened disk utilities.....I had to do a forced quit with the power button and then voodoo magic took over and it's now booted up using the external drive.....finally

so hopefully all is good.....for the moment at least