Just another approach.
Not sure, but try different cables and try to establish a connection with a cable. Try to connect to your phone using adb. If adb works, the rest should work as well.
The problem could be that you are focused on archiving something special. Like getting your computers data sync’ed with your phone with a software not a lot people use here, so you could easily miss a small step in the middle.
Focusing on the better described guides like for example getting adb up and running will help not overlooking those small steps on the way. I hope this makes somehow sense to you. Good luck and don’t forget to tell us if you got it running and how!