Hello all...

Hi everyone,

My name is Tony. I'm new to this forum. I've been using Android smart phones for about a year and a half now. I've only rooted one Android device so far, but by no means am I new to the "modding"/"hacking" scene. I've had a lot of practice with ROMs and such while hacking Dish Network receivers back in the early 2000's. Although these devices are far different from smart-phones, the basic principles are the same: Getting to the EEPROM where the ROM's are located, backing up the old ROM, installing a new one, privilege escalation, and making things do what you want them to, and what the manufacturer does not want  it to (e.g. wireless tether)

I am really excited about a wireless tether, as it will help me immensely with my work and schooling.

The problem is that I cannot get my computer to recognize my phone via USB, something that would seem essential to modding these phones. I've tried numerous threads on this website suggesting fixes to this problem, ads well as solutions provided by other websites, to no avail.

It seems that there is something very fundamentally wrong. No combination of drivers, cords, or SD card states has helped me at all. Plugging the phone in gives me a "Device failed to install" and trying to install a different drivers gives me the "device couldn't start (code 10)" error. The Samsung drivers, June-Fabrics drivers, and others, have no effect.

So that's it in a nutshell. I'd love to be a contributing member of this community, but I cannot even get my phone to show up on my computer, so I don't see how that could happen, short of buying a different phone.

EDIT*****************************************
Forgot to mention my OS is Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit edition
I also have a laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit