After contacting Cingular, several levels of support at Samsung, and
Microsoft (none of whom were able to help at all), I FINALLY figured it out!
It actually wasn't so much a Vista issue as it was an issue of Intel hardware
incompatibility with Vista:
***IF YOU'RE RUNNING VISTA ON AN INTEL MOTHERBOARD, YOU HAVE TO DISABLE
"QuickResume Technology" IN THE BIOS!!***
Apparently Intel's VIIV QuickResume technology is not compatible with Vista,
so even if you've successfully installed the VIIV package AND the quickresume
driver set, the setting in the BIOS can cause obscure hardware problems when
enabled -- one of which is not recognizing mobile USB devices. The setting
can be found in the Power sub-menu of Intel's BIOS setup.
I hope this saves somebody else out there the many hours & headaches I've
spent figuring this out [and I hope Cingular, Samsung, & Microsoft are taking
notes since their "technical support staff" are supposedly paid to know these
things....

]
--Chris
"ChrisNYC75" wrote:
> I've been everywhere else on the web and have seen this problem restated a
> few dozen times, but since my calls to Cingular, Samsung, & Microsoft have
> yielded no assistance whatsoever, I'm hoping maybe somebody here might be
> able to help....
>
> I'm trying to connect my Samsung Blackjack Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone to
> my PC (Vista Home Premium 32) and am having one of 3 problems (depending on
> the settings I use) when trying to connect & sync my mobile device via USB.
> These are the scenarios I'm running into:
>
> scenario 1 -- if I set my phone to settings>connections>USB>MODEM then the
> mobile device is recognized & installs the correct [?] drivers and appears
> ready to use in the Vista Device Manager; however, I cannot see the device in
> Windows Explorer at all, nor can I interface with it through Mobile Device
> Center (which I've uninstalled & reinstalled several times). WMDC says there
> is "no connection found", but if I query the 'modem' Vista says it is found
> and says the device is active & functioning properly.
>
> scenario 2 -- if I set my phone to settings>connections>USB>Mass Storage
> then the mobile device is recognized as a USB Storage Device and installs as
> drive "E:" on my system, but is either "unable to start" or shows a blank
> drive with "0kb" space.
>
> scenario 3 --if I set my phone to settings>connections>USB>ActiveSync then
> the when I connect my mobile device, Vista says it is an "unrecognized
> device" and load something called "Unknown Device" as the driver. Apparently
> Vista is satisfied that "Unknown Device" is an acceptable driver type -- it
> even says "unknown device" is "functioning properly" and is "the most updated
> driver available".
>
> Can anybody assist? I'm at my wit's end with Microsoft over this issue, and
> really don't feel I should have to resort to paying them a fee on top of what
> I've already spent on "upgrading" to Vista to help me resolve it since I'm
> hardly the only one having this problem.
>
> Thanks!! :-)
>
>