i have a yellow asterisk on this in my device manager and cant clear it up. have checked drivers. uninstalled and reinstalled it and still comes up. have a verizon phone that i have hooked up to my laptop via cable and the computer never sees the mobile phone.

Hiya,
As long as your computer is running fine then the exclamation mark isn't a problem. From the Microsoft site:

"A black exclamation point (!) on a yellow field indicates the device is in a problem state. Note that a device that is in a problem state can be functioning."

Or are you trying to say that you can't get your phone to work with the PC?