I’m putting this here, primarily so I don’t forget how to do it the next time. Hopefully other people can use this as well.
Sometimes, when I connect my phone to my Windows computer via a USB cable, the phone’s directories and files just do not show up on my Explorer. I narrowed this problem down to the drivers that Windows is using. One driver is the bad one that does not work, and the other works reliably. This is what I do when this problem happens:
1) Go to the device manager and look for something under “Other devices” or “Portable devices”. It may be the model number of the cell phone, or simply be called “MTP device”:
2) Right click on it, and select “Update Driver”
3) Select “Browse my computer for drivers”
4) Select “Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer”
5) Choose “MTP USB Device”. If there are multiple drivers, try this several times and choose a different one each time until one works. When this works, the Explorer will open a window with the files on your phone.