Laptop won't recognize phone

...basically, I can't get my phone to charge through my laptop. This whole mess started a few days ago. When I plug the phone in, I hear the usual notification sound, but nothing else happens—no pop-up, no window, nothing. It’s weird because my USB flash drive works just fine when I plug it in.
The thumb drive shows up, sure, but the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon is totally unresponsive to clicks, so I’ve just been yanking the drive out without ejecting it properly. It hasn't caused any issues yet, but honestly, if there's some underlying hardware glitch, I'd be terrified of losing data—I've got some pretty important files sitting on there.
Where do I even start troubleshooting this?
To make matters worse, the phone doesn't even show up in My Computer.

So I asked around, and they’re telling me I probably accidentally bumped some setting—I mean, honestly, how does one even do that? But anyway, apparently now I need to go grab a USB driver. I have zero clue how to actually do that... could someone please help a girl out?

If I were in your shoes, my first move would be to give it a thorough cleaning... there’s usually some grit or dust hiding in those lower chassis seams.

By the way... what kind of laptop are we dealing with here?

It’s all cleaned up and looking sharp, but I’ve been running into this one little glitch over the last few days..
The laptop is some kind of Dell Inspiron 15
Everything was working perfectly fine until now...

What exactly do you mean when you say "cleaned up"?

I suspect the issue isn't actually the drivers, though you might want to head over to the official HP website just to download the latest versions...

Nathan Ramos said:What exactly do you mean when you say "cleaned up"?

I suspect the issue isn't actually the drivers, though you might want to head over to the official HP website just to download the latest versions...

So, here’s my take on those suggestions you threw my way:

Nathan Ramos said:If I were in your shoes, my first move would be to give it a thorough cleaning... there’s usually some grit or dust hiding in those lower chassis seams.

By the way... what kind of laptop are we dealing with here?

Henry Alvarez78 said:So, here’s my take on those suggestions you threw my way:

Haha, I just realized we've actually crossed paths in conversation before...

Why don't you try testing this out with a different smartphone?
It's entirely possible that the issue isn't actually tied to your computer at all.

Quick question about transferring files
I’m using a Redmi Note 5a Prime. I have a ton of photos on there that I really need to get off the device. I've got two laptops I'm working with—one is running Windows 7 and the other is on Windows 10. When I try with the Windows 7 machine, it runs the installation, but then tells me there's nothing on the phone. On the Windows 10 laptop, it actually shows everything I want to move, but once I give it a command, it claims there are no photos on the phone. Basically, neither laptop is playing nice. I couldn't find a manual anywhere—nothing came in the box, and I can't find anything useful online. What settings do I need to tweak on either the phone or the laptops so they can actually see my photos and let me download them?

mistydriver26 said:Quick question about transferring files
I’m using a Redmi Note 5a Prime. I have a ton of photos on there that I really need to get off the device. I've got two laptops I'm working with—one is running Windows 7 and the other is on Windows 10. When I try with the Windows 7 machine, it runs the installation, but then tells me there's nothing on the phone. On the Windows 10 laptop, it actually shows everything I want to move, but once I give it a command, it claims there are no photos on the phone. Basically, neither laptop is playing nice. I couldn't find a manual anywhere—nothing came in the box, and I can't find anything useful online. What settings do I need to tweak on either the phone or the laptops so they can actually see my photos and let me download them?

You need to enable USB storage on the phone. Or you could just grab a data transfer app from Google Play.
It might also be worth reinstalling the connection drivers on your laptop.

If you haven't found a direct fix yet, there’s definitely a workaround.

I mean, you’ve got a Google account, right? You basically have to if you're using Android anyway. And since you've got that Google Drive storage space... if you're hooked up to Wi-Fi, it shouldn't be a huge deal. You can just select all your photos—or even put them in a specific folder—and set them to upload to the cloud. It takes a little longer than just plugging in a USB cable, I guess, but it works just fine. Later on, when you're back at your computer, you can just pull everything down. Just head over to drive.google.com, make sure you're logged in with the same account you use on your phone, and you can view or download any of the photos or videos you uploaded. 🙂

One little tip though... maybe upload the photos separately from the videos? Videos tend to be massive files, so it might be easier that way.