I've finally figured out what causes the vita not to connect to the pc properly (i.e charging but no qcma via usb connectivity). it appears to be smb 1.0. I enabled it earlier to map my 360's drives when suddenly I could no longer make a connection via qcma (adding the package bubble which I found as a vpk, so it won't be removed from a rebuild of the database). also, disabling it doesn't work. there seem to be traces of in the system. you can enable/disable this option in windows features (right next to uninstall a program). I had to do a system restore for when I made a disk image of windows (files and settings for everything). I'm glad I made that backup. I had just made it on the 20th, so not much was lost. all files are intact too. I need to configure my system to make more restore points. anyway, the mystery is solved. smb 1.0 was disabled by microsoft deliberately due to security concerns. I'm sure windows 7 is still using it. there may be a way to shut it off there as well, but like I said, system restore is the only way to fix the problem. ;-/
