Windows 7: Bluetooth functionality gone after updating drivers

I've had a Kensington Bluetooth 2.1 EDR dongle for quite some time and it has worked with Windows. It uses a Broadcom chipset.

A few days ago, I decided to stream audio from it ( making it an audio sink ) to my Creative ZiiSound D5x Wireless Bluetooth speakers. After Windows detected that the speakers were an audio device it sent me to a web page on Broadcom's site to update my drivers. Specifically, I had to install the WIDCOMM Bluetooth Software for Windows.

After this, I tried to add a new Bluetooth device only to get the error message :
"Bluetooth is not ready."

I had heard that older Bluetooth dongles had trouble or didn't work at all in Windows 7 as Microsoft re-wrote the Bluetooth stack so I bought a new dongle -- this time a Medialink Bluetooth 4.0 adapter, also Broadcom based.

Unfortunately, I got the same error that I did with the older adapter. Also, if I click on "Bluetooth Assistant" I get the error message : "Auto search has stopped because Bluetooth power is off." This is regardless of the fact that I disabled power management on the device, under the device settings->Power management: "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power." Furthermore, if I open up Bluetooth settings and click the power button labeled "Click Button to Enable" Under the caption "Bluetooth Function Disable" nothing happens.

Any help would be appreciated.



Thanks,

jdb2