Satellite A205: Bluetooth USB dongle will no longer connect to AirCable

Question

I plugged a generic Bluetooth USB dongle into my Satellite A205 and used it for several hours over three days to connect to an AirCable Serial Bluetooth to run my telescope controller. The generic dongle worked after downloading a Toshiba stack.
Each time I restarted the Bluetooth it incremented the COM port numbers.
My telescope controller will not recognize COMs above 20 so I deleted COMs that really were not used.
The Bluetooth USB dongle will no longer connect to the AirCable Serial Bluetooth. *It worked before and will not work today.*
I've tried three different Bluetooth USB dongles including TrendNet, AirCable and the generic.
I cannot connect to the telescope controller's AirCable Serial Bluetooth with any of the dongles.
_*Can anyone suggest a Bluetooth monitor that will work, or suggest a way to get my A205 to work with one of my Bluetooth USB dongles?*_
Don

Answer 1

I have Vista. I did not download SP1. It did not appear in the Update Manager. My laptop is about 3 months old so I did not want to download the 400+ MB SP1 to a fairly new version of Vista Home Premium.
Here are steps that did work for me. This process is tedious but it worked three times in a row with no failures after scores of failed connection attempts.
*_Getting Bluetooth to Work With Vista and Generic Bluetooth Dongle_*
1. Power up Bluetooth serial (AirCable).
2. Start laptop with Vista Home Premium and wait 2 minutes.
3. Plug in the generic Bluetooth dongle.
4. Click tray Bluetooth icon to show Bluetooth devices.
5. Select and remove the existing device.
6. Unplug and plug in the generic Bluetooth dongle. My Bluetooth COM Port is 6-Outgoing Serial, and 7-Incoming
7. Add a new connection for the Bluetooth serial.
8. Start; Control Panel; Device Manager
9. If COM ports with a higher number than your selected ports (mine are COM 6 and COM 7) exist, do the following:
- Right-click the port number that is the Output port (Click the Bluetooth icon in the tray to determine which COM number is output and which is input).
- Let's say for my example that Device Manager Ports shows COM 11 and COM 12, and that COM 11 is output.
- Right-click COM 11 and select Properties
- Click the Port Settings tab and the Advanced button
- Click the Com Port number dropdown list and reassign it to COM 6 (the desired Outgoing COM port).
- Click OK a couple of times.
- Now, right-click COM 12 (input), Properties, Port Settings tab, and Advanced button.
- Reassign COM 12 to COM 10 (OK...), reassign to COM 9 (OK...), reassign to COM 8 (OK...), reassign to COM 7 (OK...). (You are clearing out unused COM ports 10, 9, and 8.)
- Click OK a couple of times.
- Click the tray Bluetooth icon and remove the existing device.
- Pull the Bluetooth USB dongle out of the computer and reinsert it.
- Click the tray Bluetooth icon, search for and add your Bluetooth serial device.
At this point your remote Bluetooth device should have a good connection.
+++++++++++++
Thank you everyone for your input. It is too bad that it is so difficult to use a Bluetooth dongle with Vista but such is life.
Don