Raph_395:
Now the only thing stopping me from burning the bootloader onto my arduino is that i want to be sure that my problem is, in fact, a missing bootloader.Should i go straight ahead and burn the bootloader or is there anything else which could be the problem at hand?
You didn't say if you had used another USB cable. I have only been caught once that way and it was a phone charge cable.
Just hooked up a Pro Micro and loaded Arduino as ISP sketch. Hooked up the wires and changed the Ide to Arduino Uno and burned bootloader. No Problems, used pin 10 on the Pro micro for the reset.