Android device not seen by ADB but accessible from Windows XP

Question

I just bought a new Nexus 7 tablet and I am trying to put my first Java application on it. However, I am stuck at a very basic point: ADB does not see my device. When I check on my working station, Windows perfectly detects the tablet, I switched the USB port and every one make appear the device but ADB still cannot see it. I rebooted and it is still not working. Any idea about this?

Update

There was actually two problems. First, I had not activated the USB debugging mode. This was the reason why I could use the tablet from the working station (as a simple multimedia player) even though the correct USB driver was not installed.

Second, the driver was not detected by Windows XP (even we I specified the correct repository to search for it). The problem was solved by following the procedure described by adamp

Answer 1

As Thomas K points out, you need to install the ADB driver for the device from the SDK manager. Also confirm that USB debugging is enabled on the device as mihail noted.

The basic ADB driver provided with the SDK is generic and can work with any Android device. Simply add the appropriate lines to the android_winusb.inf file under extras/google/usb_driver to make Windows recognize the device hardware IDs during driver installation. Add the lines under the x86 section for 32 bit Windows or amd64 section for 64 bit Windows.

For the Nexus 7, the configuration you'll need is:

;Nexus7
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_4E42
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_4E42&MI_01

The significant sections there are VID_XXXX and PID_YYYY on both lines. If you have another Android device you would like to add, start by duplicating the lines above in the correct section of the file. You'll need to replace the hardware IDs with the correct IDs for your device.

Open Device Manager, locate the Android device without an ADB driver installed, right click it, and choose Properties. Under the Details tab, select Hardware IDs from the dropdown list. You'll see a line that looks something like USB\VID_18D1&PID_4E42&MI_01. Copy the VID_XXXX section and PID_YYYY section into the two lines you added in the .inf file above. Save the file, then update the driver for the device and use the driver from the directory where the .inf you just saved is.