The other day I was doing some product shots to throw on ksl.com classifieds. Shot tethered via a safety orange usb 2.0 cable courtesy of Tether Tools into Lightroom 4. Worked perfectly.

Fast forward a couple days. Did a routine image dump from my cf card to LR using the Canon supplied usb 2.0 cable straight from my camera. So far so good.

Tonight, I attempt to start a tethered session in Lightroom 4.. no device found. I take a couple quick snaps and go to import, 7d is nowhere to be found. I go to My Computer.. 7d isn't listed as a mass storage device, or otherwise. I go to the device manager and the driver isn't listed, I have my computer check for hardware changes, refreshing the list.. no joy. I should also mention that I checked and my version of windows doesn't require the separate download and installation of the Windows Media Feature Pack. It seems Samsung was nice enough to at least give me that much already.

Having worked for Microsoft a couple years ago I think.. "what has changed since it worked last?" I check my update history.. nothing. Apparently the only thing that has changed is my luck.

Any ideas? I'm running out of them. I even updated the firmware on the 7d, and a few other seemingly far fetched ideas. Of course, I can use my external card reader to import the files, but I enjoy shooting tethered, and have every intention of doing so during this year's Help Portrait event.. (http://help-portrait.com/ for anyone that hasn't heard of it. Good stuff.)

I'm at my wits end.. and having been on the engineer side of things I refuse to call MS or Samsung support and go through the motions. Maddening.

Relevant info I guess.. I'm running an OEM licensed Windows 8.1. Pro, I think. Not really sure what the versions are, I got out of the game just after the windows 7 launch. Camera is now running firmware 2.0.3.. it was v2.0.0 when the issue started.

I'm hoping one of you has one of those "I had the exact same problem and here was the easy solution that quickly and efficiently solved my problem, paid my bills, and got a fresh pot of coffee brewing" moments and becomes my new best friend.

Thanks!

-Rocco