Windows 7: Bluetooth functionality gone after updating drivers

Note that this is a re-post of Bluetooth functionality gone after updating drivers as I never received a reply.



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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 ( well, in this post, months), 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

P.S. "Auto search has stopped because Bluetooth power is off." appears on system start-up and seems to stay in the lower right corner of my screen most of the time. This is one change since my original post.