[Verizon Droid Charge] elvisruns2000:
I'm in a quandry. I've had my Samsung Droid Charge for 2 years and while I qualify for an upgrade, I thought to myself it's time to root and see what this thing can do (and hopefully get some extended life out of it).

So I read thru a lot of root threads and how-to's, and was about ready to start setting up, went to connect my phone to my computer with the USB cable that came with the phone (which I have also used for 2 yrs) and lo and behold, there's no connection to the computer. Computer recognizes something trying to connect via USB, but notification on the computer that pops up says "USB Device Not Recognized." Now, when I used to connect to any computer, a screen on my phone would come on asking if I wanted to connect the phone as a mass storage device or media player. That screen doesn't come up any more when I plug in the USB. The phone beeps as if it was connecting but then just indicates that it is charging. I've never had any issues with this before.

I've gone thru the rigamorole of trying different USB ports, different computers, different USB cables. Nothing doing on any of those. Tried setting the phone on "ask on connection" and "mass storage" on different computers. Nothing there either. Tried with USB debugging on and off on the phone. No dice. I have even tried a couple of complete hard resets of the phone, and still will not connect to any computer. Based on some info from other forums I even tried downloading some Samsung USB drivers to my computer (which I never had before and had no problem connecting without), and they don't even seem to install properly. message I get when the install finishes says "Device driver was not successfully installed" and then just shows a list of my printer drivers????? My printers work fine - don't know what the hell that Samsung's Mobile Phone driver has to do with our HP printer.

Spent 45 useless minutes at the Verizon store yesterday only to have their "tech" guy do another master reset, and finally give me the toll free number to Verizon and tell me it was their tech support number. Spent another hour on the phone when i eventually got to a tech support person only to be told that I'm eligble for an upgrade.

Part of the reason I started this process was that after two years, the original battery was draining really quickly with minimal use, and the battery power screen that shows during the charge cycle (with power off) was looking weird - it was showing battery with no charge, then all of a sudden would show partial depending on how long it was connected. Maybe thats what it's always done, but for some reason it looks different to my. So I purchased a brand new battery. For a couple of days it "seemed" like the new battery was holding power, but when I go to charge it, that charge screen is still doing the same thing. On top of that the last two days my battery drained really quickly again, with very minimal use (Went from full charge at the start of the day to about 50% after 5 hours just checking a few texts and emails). I don't know if that factors into why it's not connecting to the computer, but I find it unlikely that both the connection and battery problems are coincidental.

Anyone have any ideas for me at this point? Frustrated by having spent waaaaaaay too much time on this already. I'd really like to go root, but I don't see how unless I can determine how to get this thing to connect to a computer again.