Connecting my Galaxy S II to my PC through it's USB port

Did you enable USB debugging?  That might be causing this.

I have the solution for Windows XP users.  Install the Kies software for Windows XP.  You can download it from Samsung.com.  It includes the drivers you need. 

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@dblshell wrote:

I have a great  ambivalence about answering my own question.  If it's hard won, I am elated.  If the answer was staring me in the face the whole time, I feel like a dope.  On a scale of 1 to 10, this was a 5.  Here was the solution spelled out:

 

If your PC (I'm running Windows 7) doesn't recognize your Galaxy S II when connected to it's USB port, place your finger at the top of your screen (on your home page) and pull down.  Make sure you're pulling down the absolute top (where your battery incadicator is located).  There is a box that has the USB symbol and the words "USB connected".  Under that, it should say "Select to copy files to/from your computer".   Click that.

Another page opens with the Android avatar and a button at the bottom of the page that allows you to connect to your PC.  It has the words "Connect USB storage" .  Click that and you're done.  Your files will now show up in your Windows File Manager (Windows Explorer).

Thanks to each one of you that lent solutions to this first time smart phone user. 

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lol, that comes so naturally to me at this point that I didn't even think of that.

(Also, I'm lazy and usually just use adb push/pull)

To the guy talking about drivers - drivers are not needed for USB mass storage mode.

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@FredW wrote:
Drivers are needed, they just come with the operating system. There are a few pieces of rogue hardware that have been known to replace them.

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Well true - but for any USB mass storage device, you should never need to install drivers on anything newer than Win98 or so.

I have a similar problem that I cannot resolve.  I can connect my Skyrocket to my PC via USB and it seems the phone's main memory as a mass storage device, but since a few weeks now the SD card in the phone is not found anymore.  It worked at first and I could access the phone memory and SD card in it via USB.  Since I have most files on the SD card, this is really annoying as I need to extract it and plug it into the PC's SD card reader.

I tested on two PC's with Windows 7 and they have exactly the same behavior, so it must be something on the phone.

Can anybody help?