[Vibrant Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] shalom24:
First off, I want to thank the wonderful amount of knowledge and help here at XDA! Not to be impolite to anyone else, but through all my searching, I have yet to find anything like this forum (and I come from a number of forums); but none have had quite the caliber of kind, knowledgeable, and often humorous: people. So thank you all. Also, another disclaimer is that I've only been on Android for about a month and half, so please bear with me as I might (and probably) misuse vernacular and/or might not completely understand some of the technical lingo' (at least the first time through, but I have spent much time here reading through help guides and threads).

Alright, here's the problem: I cannot get a computer to recognize the Vibrant. Installed all the drivers I have found thus far, followed a number of guides from here at xda, and have tried a number of different computers (two Win7 machines, a Vista, and even two XP machines); all of which recognize my personal Vibrant without a hick-up. Here is perhaps the biggest, and main, problem: the computers/odin won't even recognize it in Download Mode. That is what is stumping me..

If you do not care to know about how I got to where I am, please jump to the 'Question:' part.

Here is the back-story:

I bought a used Samsung Vibrant that came with the JI6 build. This was the second vibrant I had purchased as it was for my sister; and for the most part (other than it being horribly slow on the 'stock' build) it was running, and perfectly functioning.

However, I did notice that it was not able to connect it to a computer; usb debugging, mounting sd, and all the guides I found for troubleshooting just didn't seem to do the trick. Still no connection to the pc. I eventually educated myself on Download and Recovery mode, both of which I could execute without really any problems.

But since I wanted to run a faster OS (And I had already successfully flashed my personal Vibrant to Froyo (Build 21VE) (Here)) I decided to flash my sister's vibrant as well. And since I was unable to connect via usb to use odin to flash to the JFD build (per highly suggested here on xda), I used a nandroid image to flash the stock JFD build from Samsung (I can't find the link at the moment, but it was here from the xda forum). All went well, I was on JFD. I then used the above link to flash the Froyo21VE build via clockwordMod; again, it went smoothly. Only one problem persisted at this point:

the wifi would not work

.

My brother had experienced a similar issue with his Vibrant's wifi a few weeks previous, but had resolved it by flashing a different Froyo build. Naturally I thought I might do the same. This is where things went South.. Perhaps I was multi-tasking too much at the time, or possibly I just wasn't paying attention, but after a quick google search I found this Froyo build here on xda: [ROM] Froyo (RS)JP5 - "K9" [25/11/2010]. Moved it onto the internal sd card; flashed via clockworkMod; and then it froze on its boot-up after installation. Not cool..

Unfortunately, I was not aware that the build was for the Galaxy S i9000 rather than a Vibrant branded Galaxy; once realized though, my gut sank.. As now I am wondering if I completely tanked this Vibrant; or perhaps it had a problem from the bigging in that the usb wasn't connecting?

Question:

First and foremost, is there an 'advanced' way of connecting via usb from a computer, or some other way of doing it? I have tried numerous usb cables (as I've read a couple different people were having success with that) on several different computers (all of which, though, seem to be working perfectly on my personal vibrant, just not this one). Or is there a special driver that allows for just the 'Download Mode' on the Vibrant to communicate to the pc? But from my understanding, it seems as though the 'download mode' is pretty much as basic as you can get, am I correct in that assumption? Additionally, would using the android sdk help at all? (Or again, doesn't it have to be able to be recognized from the computer first?)

And lastly, just in case I thought it wasn't complex, when I had a functioning OS on the Vibrant: when I plugged in the usb, the Vibrant would show that it recognizes the pc; I even could 'mount the sd', but the computer still wouldn't recognize it apart from a few times that it would show it as 'unknown device' and would not seem to load any drivers; and I was having difficulty locating the device in Device Manager. (But that only seemed to work when I had a functioning OS, now that it only can go into ClockworkMod or Download Mode, I have yet for the computer to acknowledge its presence)

Alright, there it is. Please let me know if I missed something, or if more information would be helpful. Again, I want to thank anyone who would be able to help me out, or give suggestions. I really am at a loss for ideas; and the past week of analyzation is hardly showing any signs of improvement.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

EDIT: it occurred to me that I didn't mention that I am unable to load any *.zip files while in ClockworkMod (thus being able to flash a different build). It continually gives a 'No File Found' or Error/Wrong command. I believe that was caused by the i9000 firmware messing up the file system on the Internal_sd, does that seem logical?