
Without doing so, we are just wasting time. It is critical to identify the USB-serial adapter on your Nano. So until you get a COM port to appear, putting a new bootloader on the '328p won't have any hope of solving the problem, any more than changing the tires will help a car that doesn't start.

The USB-serial adapter will appear as a COM port if the drivers are installed correctly, regardless of what's going on with the microcontroller (barring a catastrophic failure that shorted the supply or something).

The nano consists of a USB - Serial adapter, connected to the atmega328p microcontroller's serial pins. Until you get the nano to appear as a COM port, bootloading will make no difference.
