Please tell me about the Windows Device Manager entry in Boards Manager that appears when you plug your Uno in. Is it under the "Ports (COM and LPT)" section of the Device Manager device tree? Does it say the COM port in the name of the device in the Device Manager device tree? The "Port_#0001.Hub_#0008" thing isn't relevant. That's referring to the USB port, not the COM port.
reddski:
the reset button on my Arduino seems to do nothing. When plugged in, the "on" and "L" led's are lit, I would assume that it would cause at least a short flicker in the lights, but they remain constantly lit, even while pressing and/or holding down the reset button.
That's right. On the Uno, after you press the reset button, the "L" LED should blink a couple times. This could indicate the bootloader is missing from your Uno's ATmega328P chip. However, that wouldn't cause your issue with the board not getting a COM port because the COM port is generated by the CH340 chip on your Uno. Without a COM port, an upload can not happen, so that's the first problem that needs to be solved. After that, we can look into the bootloader situation if necessary.
reddski:
I am more than happy to throw a little more money at this if there is a reasonable chance I have bad hardware, but I also don't want to buy two of these if I am hopeless.
It's certainly possible that you have bad hardware. I haven't had much problem with this, but it certainly happens. It's always nice to have a "known good" spare board stashed away to pull out as a sanity check when your working board is acting in an inexplicable manner. It's also nice to have a backup board so that in the event of a "magic smoke" event, you aren't blocked from progress on your project while waiting on a replacement board. Killing a few pieces of hardware seems to be an inevitable part of the learning process. A spare Arduino board could also be helpful if you do need to fix the bootloader because you will need an ISP programmer for that and you can convert an Arduino board into an "Arduino as ISP" programmer.
You certainly aren't hopeless. Many thousands of people are successfully using Arduino every day. For most of them, they install the IDE, plug in the board, and are blinking an LED in a matter of minutes. Rarely, there are some difficulties and it takes a little longer to get things working. If you keep working at this, I'm certain you'll get it eventually. It's possible that could mean getting a replacement board, but we can still work on getting your current board going.
reddski:
Device is called ATmega16U2 per device manager.
Interesting. If it's an ATmega16U2 then the correct drivers are under the drivers subfolder of the Arduino IDE installation folder and I'm extremely surprised you were able to do anything with the CH340 driver, since that's for an entirely different chip. Try installing the proper Arduino drivers and see if that gets you a port.
reddski:
Any ideas on why I am only given the COM1 option?
Many computers have a build in serial port, even if they don't actually provide a connector for it on the back any more. That serial port will normally be COM1. When you plug in a properly working and configured Arduino board to your computer, Windows will assign it its own COM port. I already told you how to check if the COM1 port is your Arduino board. If COM1 still shows even when your Uno is not connected to your computer, then it's obviously not the port of your Uno and you need to forget about COM1, since it's not going to be of any use to you.
Device manager says it is on port 1, hub 6. In the arduino programmer I seem to be failing to connect, despite having Com1 set as the port. When I try to get board info, it says it's a "native serial port, can't obtain info". There are no other port numbers listed, "serial" is there, but grayed out. So much struggle.