Hi Positive Trance,
A warm welcome to the eForum!
I'm hardly an expert with VMC and dongles however I'd say it looks like your doing everything correctly, it may be worth temporarily disabling your firewall in case this is blocking the connection.
It would be great if you have access to another computer you can test the dongle with, if it works with another laptop/desktop PC then we can rule out a hardware problem with the modem itself.
Thanks
Holly
eForum Team