Garmin Forerunner and Samsung Kies: USB software incompatible!

Last week I had to push out an update of my TripsNMiles Android application to Google Play. I had not used the development environment for about a year, and to avoid any issues I updated the Samsung Kies software on the development machine. The next time I wanted to upload 2 weeks worth of workout data from the Garmin Forerunner 305, none of the Garmin apps would recognize it.
Even though I suspected the Kies update and even mentioned it in my email to Garmin’s support, I did not uninstall Kies, but instead spent a couple of days googling the issue (without much luck) while logging more runs on the Forerunner. But none of the suggested solutions worked, which included cleaning the contacts on the cradle and the device, rebooting, and even updating the firmware with the Web Updater. The latter was unsuccesful because the Web Updater did not find the device, either, even though it was connect to the USB port that had always worked, it was charging, and it was recognized by Windows.

When I became increasingly concerned about reports of people who did a hard-reset and lost all their data, I finally found this thread on the Garmin forum. I immediately uninstalled the Kies software, and the Forerunner was recognized once again. All data is now safely uploaded.