I don't know nearly as much as these others on here but I just got past this issue myself today, after struggling for several days. I am running Vista 64bit home premium and had to do a couple things. Maybe I missed you doing this already so forgive me if so. First I went to Microsoft and downloaded update for snycing with Vista, next I did have to uncheck usb to pc "enable advanced network functionality" and then wala it finally worked and recognized my device. Hope this helps and I understand the frustration. Good Luck!
I believe this was the one.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/i...splayLang%3den