Why put yourself through all this grief?
How many times does it crop up here? Bought three "Arduino" boards for £5. Can't get them to work.
You might save a few quid and get lucky, but you can end up spending a lot of time and effort finding out they aren't really a bargain.
Wut? I don't get it.
Hook the phone up with the USB cable and browse it with the file explorer in Windows.
Possibly easier is to visit the forum from your cell phone, start a reply here and attach the photo. On a cell phone there is a little icon like below under the reply window that you can use to attach a photo.
Oh wait, now I get it.
Its a different situation for all of you in the "Western Countries". You can get them for cheap and real easily. But for the rest of the world, such as my country, India, the situation is totally different.
First of all, you can't get the original Arduino products here. Since the products are from Italy, they don't deliver to India. The websites are also not easily usable by us.
Secondly and most importantly, the Arduino products are EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE for us. You people usually use Dollars and Pounds for your products, and you people also earn your money in these currencies and have enough to buy these products. But, we need to pay THOUSANDS of Rupees (the Indian Currency) to get the original Arduino products.
So, we technically HAVE NO CHOICE but to buy the off-brand ones.
P.S.: I sound mad in this post, but I am not mad at you or anyone else who thinks this. I'm just mad at the system for being like this.
No. Way. I can type from my phone ! Yay ! 
P.S.: This was just a test.
I don't dispute your other points, but this specific one is incorrect. Arduino does have authorized distributors in India:
Furthermore Arduino recently opened a manufacturing arm in India and India-exclusive variants of official boards are now being manufactured in India via the "Made-in-India" initiative: the UNO Ek (एक) R4 Minima and UNO Ek (एक) R4 WiFi boards:
Okay, here are the real pictures:
Upper View (Correct Orientation):
)I'm sorry, I didn't know. But that's still not not the main problem, is it ?
THIS is.
P.S.: I also said this:
So I'm not blaming any user for this. Please don't tell me this is because I was rude. Please don't ban my account or do anything like that 
.
As I said:
Well I'm sorry to hear that.
There's not much I can do about your supply issues.
Just pointing out that clones can cause a lot of issues. As you describe it yourself, "knock off"
There are good clones, plenty of them. You don't have to buy genuine Arduino.
But if you you choose, perhaps by necessity, to buy copies, then you can get problems as you found out.
I'm also a little uneasy about not supporting the Arduino project.
We used all the support, the IDE etc., and I like to give something back.
Maybe that might change as Arduino becomes part of a much larger commercial organisation.
I don't buy from Arduino directly either.
There are many worldwide distributors who market Arduino products and if you are lucky, there are local resellers.
However, if you are starting out, the last thing you want are issues with the hardware.
Hopefully, you'll get going using some of the suggested solutions.
I'm fully aware that India is a developing nation, but you do seem to have a thriving IT presence in the world, and perhaps you will be able to influence how important it is to have access to reasonably priced hardware as an educational resource.
That looks like damage to one of the data pins (pin 2):
If that pin were missing or not making good contact with the corresponding contact in the plug then that would explain the problem and is unfortunate. Other than replacing the connector, you will need to using one of the alternative methods to program the board. I don't think there is an easy way to repair that.
There seem to be no markings visible on the 16-pin IC next to the crystal (long metal can) behind the USB connector but it could be just the lighting. Does it have anything printed on it?
Have a look at Robocraze based in India. 699 rupees for the Uno R4 is less than the "1000s" you mention. That's around 6GPB here which initially doesn't sound like a lot and its actually cheaper than you can get one for here - around 18GBP for the Uno R4 Minima . However, that is until you take into account the earnings difference which is around 10% of of what people earn in the UK, so that 6GBP now looks like 60GBP to someone in India, so I guess that I can understand the frustration. Bizarrely the UNO R3 is nearly 1400 rupees, but presumably they are not manufacturing those in India? I can't see the official Indian Arduino site from here so no idea what the prices are on their store.
https://robocraze.com/search?q=arduino+ek&options%5Bprefix%5D=last&type=product
(The above is as seen from the UK and may not look the same when viewed in another country)
Not sure how much more affordable the alternative but reputable clone boards from the likes of Sparkfun, Elegoo and Adafruit are over there? Might be worth a look? Although if they are being sourced from the West then you might have the same problem.
If there is no print on the IC marked in red it's a fake or a reject. A real CH340 will have print in it as shown in below image (of a clone Nano).
Because you say that the board is new I would contact the seller and ask for a refund or a replacement.
OK. How about we all forget about this whole "different countries, off-brand boards, currency barriers, blah, blah, blah" drama ? This is all very valuable information, but we're getting off topic. Let's focus on the problem for now.
Well, the pin is still in there and doesn't look damaged, bent or poking out. It's just the plastic piece that broke off.
No, it does not have anything printed on it.
Oh no, it doesn't have anything written on it 
. Only a single dot at the corner.
I literally just thought about how the conversation would go and it's HILARIOUS . The board was ordered ALMOST A YEAR AGO 
. I'm not calling you stupid or anything, but it is kinda' funny 
. So yeah, it is NOT getting returned.
Problem: USB interface damaged (supposedly)
Solution: If you have soldering skills, swap the USB connector, as suggested in post #31. If you don’t, you can upload sketches to the chip either:
All those options already told in post #17.
Maybe it’s time to focus on the solution…
Did you try to install the driver as mentioned in post #10? And next connect and see if it's properly detected.
You board should run the blink sketch when it comes from the factory. Does the L-LED flash one second on / one second off?
Further you can test if bootloader is present. Press and release the reset button. You should see 3 flashes in quick succession after releasing the reset button; do you see that? If not, you can try to burn the bootloader.
After that I'm out of options; if the bootloader ispresent you can always follow the advice given earlier by @oldcurmudgeon and buy a serial-to-usb adapter (best to get one that has the DTR pin broken out) and use that to program the board.
For your information, there have been a number of topics about boards with those unmarked chips ICs. Some of them are detected by Windows as a FT232 but are in a 16 pin package; official FT232 ICs don't exist in a 16 pin package so those are total fakes.
Lesson learned; test something after you have bought it 
I was aware that many Nano boards now have fake UART chips on them that present as "Future Technology Devices International, Ltd FT232 Serial (UART) IC", which, of course, they are not. However, I have not yet seen and didn't realise that clone UNO boards have had them for a while as well. You say you purchased this a year ago? Interesting and one to take note of to avoid in the future.
Whenever I order something from Amazon or AliExpress I have a plan for testing when it arrives. I had about a 30% fail rate on stuff from AliExpress. Fewer problems with Amazon, but I haven't ordered as much from them.
I have been closely monitoring the forum for reports of these chips and have only seen a handful occurrences. So it seems that the boards are relatively rare.
What we have seen far, far more of are the reports of the unlabeled chips that identify as WCH CH340.
The first report of one of these chips (regardless of board model) that I am aware of is 2024-10-05:
The first report of one on an UNO derivative I am aware of 2024-12-06:
As for the unlabeled "CH340" chips, their existence was brought to the attention of the forum helpers after uploads to these boards started failing following the update of the CH340 driver that occurred circa 2023-04-01. However boards with these chips were likely on the market for some time prior to that date.
