How do I get my Zune to not only connect, but also to stay connected to my laptop?

I recently recovered my Zune 30GB from the mess that was my bedroom… I hadn’t used it in a couple years. And go figure, moments later, I was able to locate the cable for it as well! Anyways, that is wonderful and all… But I am having significant difficulty getting it to connect to my laptop and stay connected. Initially, it wouldn’t connect at all, so I went and found the latest Zune software, installed that, and plugged it in… It connected, but then disconnected again a moment later… And repeated that until I eventually unplugged it out of frustration.

It’s not the cable, as I am able to plug it into a powersource and it charges without interruption. It shouldn’t be the software, as it is the latest software. I’m considering doing a factory reset of the firmware on the zune, to see if that might help. Any other ideas?

And just some tech specs: I am on a Windows 7 machine, the Zune is running the 3.3 (39) software, and um… Honestly I’m not sure what else would be relevant in this situation. But just to throw it out there, I have in fact tried more than just one usb port. Same issue.