[stumped]

I have an aura HD , I guess about 3 years old now ? bought when new and shiny. It is on permanent loan to my son who brings it here occasionally to add books to.
But it's becoming harder and harder to persuade windows, & hence calibre to " see" the device., so lots of plug / unplug various cables into various usb ports until it suddenly shows up as a connected device in windows .
the reader will always say computer detected, and then connected and charging., it will say that as soon as the 1st pins make contact, even before the cable is pushed firmly in - I guess the charging pins connect before everything else
probably this is old age and so there is no fix, except to keep trying to push cables firmly into the socket. The socket does not seem loose at all. and the reader is good , for actully reading, but it is as if some cables for sure are not going deep enough into the socket to give a connected device status

I am posting in case any one has remedial suggestions , other than start saving up for a newer one.
I doubt the PC or that cables are at fault as my Kindle paperwhite connects reliably with the same cables to the same PC USB ports . we used to have a Kobo arc tablet that developed similar problems and eventually the kobo port just died,

as an alternative, is it possible for that aura HD to get at dropbox via its basic web browser and pull books from my calibre library backup in drop box, if the device socket degrades to be a charging-only socket ?