ADB cannot detect my Kindle Fire on Windows 7, but Device Manager can
So I've thrown the book at this problem and think I've isolated the cause.
I've downloaded and installed JDK 32 and 64 bit. I've installed the Android SDK as needed. I've modified android_winusb.inf inside of the google-usb-driver to include the Kindle Fire device IDs. I tried downloading the kindle fire windows 7 driver from amazon (as described in the answer here), and using that.
I tried modifying that driver to include the fire device ID in the x86 section.
I've killed and restarted adb diligently, and restarted my comp several times to see if that would magically fix it. nothing.
The only thing I'm unsure about is the modification of adb_usb.ini. Unfortunately, my .android folder doesn't exist in my %USERPROFILE%, but instead exists in another location on my computer. That folder doesn't have adb_usb.ini either. So I copied the contents of .android to my %USERPROFILE%, and created adb_usb.ini in each, and added 0x1949 to that empty file.
This did not work. adb devices still turns up zilch.
I think adb is having trouble finding my adb_usb.ini, but really, I have no idea. And if that is the case, I don't know how to fix that. Help?
Answer
Just adding 0x1949 to the adb_usb.ini was enough for me.