Bluetooth on Windows XP SP1

Important - try this at your own risk. By doing this, you could potentially damage your Windows installation.

Once Windows XP Service Pack 2 is available, it will be possible to develop Bluetooth applications using the Winsock library.

With some dongles, it is possible to do this under Windows XP Service Pack 1. You will need to do the following

Uninstall your Bluetooth dongle.
Install Hotfix Q323183.
Plug in your dongle, and install using a placeholder .INF file instead of the drivers provided by the manufacturer. Here are two example .INF files
- Brainboxes BL554
- MSI BToes

To create a .INF file for your dongle, you'll need to use usbview to get the vendor and product ID, and edit one of the sample files accordingly.