[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kScorpion:
CAPTIVATE - Frozen on AT&T Boot, Unrecognized via USB, NO access to CWM - PLEASE HELP

HI - I've been fighting this captivate for over 48 hours. Being very familiar with all this, and not doing this for the first time either, the fact that I can't get this resolved drives me insane as I have never been so mentally exhausted in being incapable of resolving a problem, thus seeking professional guidance from the Gods on mobile technology!

HERE IS THE SPIEL:

Device: Samsung Captivate i897 (Device is rooted)

Software: AOKP build.38

Kernel: IcyGlitch v14

CWM: Installed v.5-----

The Problem

Device stuck at AT&T Logo - Not Looping (just stuck)

Windows XP Professional SP3 (x86) with all recommended USB drivers will not detect device. Device Manager displays the phone as unknown, regardless of drivers & upon inputting it into a USB (2.0) windows displays a message "USB Device is not recognized".

Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (x64) brings up identical message as that of Windows XP with all proper & recommended drivers with the phone recognized as "unknown"

Device boots into download mode via holding Vol.+/- and plugin in USB cable. Both Heimdall & Odin can't recognized the device when it's in UNKNOWN state by windows. Although all drivers are installed.

Purchased new Micro USB cable - NOTHING - that's testing all USB ports on all my systems.

The Story:

The device was working flawlessly being able to mount as mass storage on both my Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (x64) & Windows XP Professional SP3 (x86) until i've upgraded to AOKP build #38. The upgrade was successful (2 months ago). 2 days ago, i decided to upgrade to AOKP build #40. The device was not recognized as mass storage but rather "Unknown Device" or "USB Device not Recognized" - although the phone was in full working condition (USB Debugging was enabled). After some reading, I realized that the AOKP build #38 has a bug where there was a problem with mounting & the camera was not functioning since it had no access to external_sd (a problem that was very irritating since the update, but i had no time to look into it until recently). I followed a similar tutorial (http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1545801) which required the editing of the vold.fstab file with Root Explorer, resolving the issue of external_sd becoming accessible on the phone with camera working, however unable to mount and copy the new AOKP Build 40 ROM through Windows to flash via CWM.

At this point I booted into CWM via holding volume +/- & power button. Wiped everything, and loaded a backup I've done a # of months ago where everything was working perfectly. There was an error when it was "...loading data image" which is normal, so I did it again and the error persisted. On the second attempt, it again re-sent me primary CWM menu where i was intending to now load another backup. I accidentally clicked the restart button, having already cleaned the devlick cache, etc, including user data which brought me this NIGHTMARE of problems.

I will be forever grateful the the kind soul which will help me resolve this, as I am at a phase of taking this samsung captivate and throwing it against a wall.