Apparently, it is a known issue that if you perform a Control Panel uninstall of WIDCOMM v6.2.1.1200 (which is a component of the Windows 7 Broadcom Bluetooth drivers), it has a minor issue: It deletes every file on your computer. Programs, data, user documents, Windows system files ... you name it. The only files not deleted are those that are locked by running applications or otherwise unable to be deleted by the uninstall process, which runs as local admin.

This version was released in 2010 and the issue has been known since then, at least in the sense that there are many web postings of people who have experienced the problem. As far as I can see, there is no official communication from Broadcom on this ... I'm not even 100% sure that the problem is fixed in current versions, since I can't find any release notes that talk about it.

People on the web forums tell the usual tragic stories of having lost the book they were writing for the past decade, etc, etc ... when it happened to me, I had backups of all my data (of course), but I'm still going to have to do a full reinstall of all my software, which is not what I planned or wanted to spend the weekend doing.

So take note: NEVER try to uninstall WIDCOMM v6.2.1.1200! Only ever upgrade it in-place!