cannot get bluetooth working at all on TZ series

I have Vista intalled on my TZ 270 series and have never been able to get bluetooth working. If I open the bluetooth applet and search for devices I can see nothing. I assume it's turned on cos the switch on the front shows blue for the BT and green for wifi.
I have tried to download the new drivers from sony but it says I already have newer ones installed !!
There is no mention of BT in the device manager and I can see no mention of BT in the Lan connections so I am assuming it's not yet installed. How can I uninstall and re-install or what should I do ?
There doesn't seem to be anywhere to switch it on other than at the front switch.

 

Did you turn your BT device on first, or while it is searching? For a cell phone, I turn it on (BT) first before searching, and for a BT mouse, I press the little button on the mouse once it starts searching.

 

Try using Sony's Smart-Wi utility to turn Bluetooth on. Smart-Wi should already be installed, plus there's also a Smart-Wi gadget for the Vista sidebar that you can use - although you may have to drag it onto your sidebar manually from the list of installed gadgets.

 

Upon checking with a friend's older TX series, there is a difference in his Vaio Control Center applet.

In his machine if you click on network connections there is a button for wireless switch settings and if you click on it then there are two boxes to check for Enable 2.4 ghz wireless LAN and enable bluetooth device.
I do not have this option in the Network connections button if I click on it in the Vaio Control Centre.

I have tried using the Sony wifi utility but turning on BT seems to make no difference.

I should mention that the first thing I did when I got the machine was to reformat to get rid of all the Sony bloatware and do a fresh install of Vista.
I am guessing that there is still some component that I have yet to install which may be the secret to a working BT connection.

And YES I have enabled BT on my phone. Actually the machine cannot see any BT devices even my friends phone and BT mouse.

 

I can only suggest reloading the BT driver. If you have a Logictech BT device (e.g., a BT mouse), they usually come with some software that you can use to connect. My SonyEriccson phone come with that too.

 

Reload the BT driver on the Sony right ?
How do I do that ?
If I download and try to use the latest driver package for BT on the Sony website it says ' I have a newer version ' but the old version ( Broadcom flavour ) is installed . I have re-installed that just for good measure .
I cannot see how I could uninstall it and install another version anyway.
I have read somewhere about using a Toshiba BT driver or something like that .
Can anyone shed any light on that road to potential success ?

 

figured it out myself. Found the way to unintstall the BT drivers in the Vista programs applet in con panel and then installed the new drivers and it works.
I have to keep putting the dial string code for EDGE *99# each time and I cannot seem to be able to turn off Wifi but at least it now works.