CSR Bluetooth USB dongle v2.1 help - icon not appearing on taskbar

I bought a USB dongle from Argos and actually went back to get it replaced in case it was the unit before posting here, but my issue persists.
The instillation instructions provided with the device, as well as those of multiple other sources, all say to do the following;
1. plug in the device and the computer will detect and install driver automatically ✓
2. click on bluetooth icon that appears in the bottom right on the taskbar. ✗

No icon appears on the taskbar and even though on Devices and Printers window it registers the device properly with no errors, when trying to go through the settings it does not think the device is plugged in.
in fact, at first nothing even happened when I'd right click on the bluetooth device and click "Bluetooth properties". it only started responding after I went to Services and stopped the bluetooth service and restarted it. before then, nothing would come up at all.
but still it doesn't realise it's plugged in and nothing is appearing on the taskbar. the driver SHOULD be installed okay but nothing is working.

Do I need to install anything or do anything? help would be very much appreciated. I just bought a bluetooth keyboard and would very much like to use it.

Did you click the little arrow in notification area and see if any icons there?

GokAy said:

Did you click the little arrow in notification area and see if any icons there?

Yes that's one of the first things I did. and I did it lots of times, kept checking if the icon was there but it never appeared.

See if this helps https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/980396

GokAy said:

See if this helps https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/980396

No, unfortunately. I just had a read through it and I tried downloading the hotfix it suggested but it wouldn't install, saying "This update is not applicable to your computer".

I have almost no experience with Bluetooth (my laptop has it built in but no devices for it). Can you try the dongle on another PC?

GokAy said:

I have almost no experience with Bluetooth (my laptop has it built in but no devices for it). Can you try the dongle on another PC?

Just tried it. it works perfectly on my mother's windows 8 PC. i plugged it in and it installed some kind of bluetooth radio service or something. the dongle was flashing orange wand I was able to connect my phone to it. everything worked the way it was meant to but it still does not work on my windows 7 machine.

Thinking back, my machine has had problems with certain memory sticks for absolutely no reason. don't know if that helps. maybe some service or something is broken.

Also, I have had my machine clean install, there was a time about a year ago when my system died and I had to completely reinstall windows. the problems with the memory drives didn't change with that so I don't think a reformatting or clean install would change anything.

Go into BIOS settings and see if USB legacy support is enabled.

GokAy said:

Go into BIOS settings and see if USB legacy support is enabled.

Hi. Sorry for slow reply, I got your message right away but when trying to get to the bios settings I broke the computer. Going to have it repaired but I think the motherboard might be broken

How did you break it? Going into BIOS is a push of a keyboard key