Thank you for the very informative post! I wish everyone would post their relevant info like this! Sadly, new people normally leave EVERYTHING out! (my small rant there!)
Are you using the USB cable that came with your tablet? There are two types of USB cables... one just for charging (no data lines), and one for charging and data. The cable that came with your tablet will certainly pass data and power. Since there's no apparent communication, it could be missing drivers, the wrong type cable, a bad USB port on your tablet or PC... or possibly a weak USB port if you're using the front ports on your PC. You might try a different cable and a USB port on the back of the PC.
The three things Windows needs to communicate with your phone are...
1) At least WMP 11 ... more specifically the run time files.
2) Microsoft User-Mode Driver Framework
3) Samsung Drivers
Windows 7 should already contain #1 & 2, and you have to install #3. You say you installed a driver. Did you update the Samsung driver to the newest version? If not, that might be a good idea.
Also, open your Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services... and see if
"Windows Driver Foundation - User-Mode Driver Framework" is listed. Also, see if it's set to Start Automatically and that it's Started. If it's not in the list, you're going to have to install it. You can get it from
HERE.
When you connect your phone to the PC, what should happen is the User-Mode driver should start. If you open Task Manager, you should see
WudfHost.exe in the Processes list. If you don't, then you may have to reinstall the UMDF driver.
Anyways, go check on these things and see if it'll help you along. It's quite late for me so I gotta go crash! I'll get back here tomorrow morning sometime.