@sjpt I appreciate your understanding of the frustration; tech support types often don't seem to get that. I'm not a computer engineer or programmer but I've been a sophisticated user of computer hardware and software since 1966 and am probably more technically sophisticated than most e-book users, and even I find this situation frustrating as h***.
I've come around to your view that a factory reset is the only way around this, though I note on the other thread that other users found that didn't work. However when I took the Glo out of the box it worked just fine, until I inadvertently signed off my Kobo account, had to re-startup and that's when the agony began. (The re-startup didn't remove my content the way a factory reset would have, so I suspect other stuff didn't get removed that should have been.)
The other issue is that the Kobo Desktop app, which is what you have to use to set up a new or factory-reset Kobo, is flaky in dealing with synchronization if you have other devices (like an iPod app) working from the same Kobo account. Don't get me started on that ... Before I re-setup I'm uninstalling the Kobo Desktop from my computer and deleting all traces of Kobo anything on my computer, so I'll be working from a "clean" reinstall. I'm also going to remove all the ebooks in my Kobo website Library so it doesn't try syncing or installing content during the setup. I have all my ebooks in ADE and all the epub files also backed up on an external hard drive, so I think I'm OK.
Will report back on this thread whether that gets ADE to recognize the Glo. If it doesn't I'm demanding a refund or exchange from Kobo.
I have to wonder how much of this technical complexity you mention is overkill by the digital rights people. I understand that authors and publishers want and need protection, but so do honest consumers who just want to read the books without having to stand on their heads coping with technical absurdities. This is going to drive some people away from e-books and back to paper books, which have other problems (weight and bulk mostly) but which don't need a degree in computer science to be able to open and read them. That isn't going to help the device manufacturers or software companies. I would like to hope the companies realize this and will fix these problems, but I wonder whether the right people in those companies are getting the message. Some of the first-line tech support types clearly don't.