[mluckham]

I am going into the EasyC terminal window - it is defaulting to COM10 (the last one used) then I choose COM3.

You are correct about the hardware setup - Bluetooth RS232 device on the robot programming port, communicating with a Bluetooth dongle in a USB port on the laptop. Bluesoleil software provides the Bluetooth connectivity, and serial port service - the software preallocates a range of ports (8, I think) for Bluetooth devices, you can see these in the Device Manager. Mine start numbering at COM10, because the lower ports were already assigned to USB-Serial cables. (Thinking this was the problem, I also tried a computer where lower-than-COM10 was assigned - still no EasyC success).

When the Bluetooth radio link is established and the virtual serial port connected, the Bluesoleil app pops up a message saying which port (COMXX) has been assigned.

In the Registry HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Enum/Root/PORTS contains entries for the Bluetooth ports. HKLM/HARDWARE/DEVICEMAP/SERIALCOMM contains a key \Device\Serial9 whose value is COM10.