I was mostly just ranting, but hey, if ya'll can figure it out.
I have a Galaxy A10E. Connecting it to my PC gives me a "USB Device not recognized" message, In the device manager, it tags it as "USB device descriptor failed." Googling led me to believe this is because it doesn't recognize my phone as a MTP device. There are various, multiple solutions I've tried.
* Changing developer settings to turn USB Debugging mode off/on, as well as finding the bizarrely hidden one that tells the phone what to do when plugging it into a PC. * Updating, uninstalling, reinstalling, downloading drivers. * Downloading a pack for Windows that is supposedly required to interact with MTP devices. * Checking the registry for a file that didn't end up being there. * The old tried & true restarting of both the PC and the phone. * Running the Windows Troubleshooter (lol), but the article that suggests this suggests an option that my PC doesn't have. The only other explanation is that the USB cord itself only charges and doesn't transfer files, but I find that kind of hard to believe since it's the one that came with the phone. A lot of this isn't helped by this apparently being such a niche problem that I can't find solutions for this specific phone and a lot of what I do find is outdated.
It's the cable and it doesn't matter if it charges only or not, though I doubt it's charge only to begin with. I've had this issue as I used to unlock phones for people, especially Samsung ones and even official ones didn't work, but some did. Even among the same model.
Edit: To clarify, it would detect, but not at full functionality to unlock and whatnot.