[win 8] itunes not detecting iphone in DFU mode for restore/recovery

Here is the story:

Had my iphone 6 plus for about a month now. Today I hooked it up to my windows 8 machine and itunes (both fully updated to latest versions).

Phone was detected fine, so I ran a full sync and backup to my local machine with itunes. No problem its all good.

Then went to the updates section and it said I had a new one (8.1.2 or whatever I cant remember)

I ran it, in itunes while the device was connected.

It downloaded and was going through the install process... then the screen on my phone went to the "connecting to itunes" graphic (with the cord and the itunes app icon). Thats where it sat.

So now it no longer appeared as a device in itunes either.

OK... went to the forums.

1) Tried all the reboots and uninstalls/reinstalls

2) Tried booting and connecting in "Recovery mode" (default now as all I see is that connecting screen)

3) Tried booting and connecting in DFU mode

Neither mode was detecting the device with itunes but I am getting the chimes of connection for windows itself.

I do see the device in my windows system hardware under "unspecified" as "Apple Mobile Device USB Driver" (and when i view details its model shows either Recovery or DFU mode depending on how I booted the device)

So here I am... stuck with a phone in either DFU mode OR recovery mode on a botched ios update and itunes wont detect it on windows 8.x

What can I do ?

Looking for some creative or outside the box ideas here. I just want a reset and restore of the backup I made on local itunes today.

If I can get the device back to even a factory reset, I am hoping itunes will detect it properly and can run a restore from it local storage.

Really stuck and been on this for hours now.