Ok, I hope everyone gets this. Here's the fix. A simple thing that is not mentioned anywhere. I went to buy a new "nokia" cable and the people at the store said they sell regular mini usb cables for nokia so that's all they had. I didn't buy one. They said it should work. So my next step was to contact Nokia/Microsoft tech support, and when filling out the contact form online, I presented the problem. It got "smart" and presented me with the process of connecting including deleting drivers if necessary...blabla. However, the important missing detail...the phone has to be TURNED OFF BEFORE connecting to the computer. Then plug the cable first into the phone then into the computer. The phone automatically turns itself on and connects to the computer. As soon as I did that, my problem was solved. The phone turned itself on, and now I can see my phone in windows explorer. Brilliant!!! I can't tell you how relieved I am. I hope this can help out those with the same problem.
My other phones don't need to be turned off before connecting, but this one does.