Wow. 10 years later and the solution was never posted. I guess for sanity's sake for the people with similar issues, the reason the drivers will not install is because Datel in the early 2000s-2010s included unsigned drivers within their software. With Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, you could not install unsigned drivers. In order to get a GBA Action Replay to connect to your PC, you'll have to use a Windows 2000/XP Virtual Machine (VMWare Workstation Pro did not detect mine, but VirtualBox did) to connect the Action Replay and load codes from the software.
To address your second issue, again for sanity's sake for people scouring the internet for solutions, when it comes to Fire Red and Leaf Green, there are two different versions of their ROMs, 1.0 and 1.1. You can tell which version your ROM/cartridge is by watching the title screen as the game boots. If the "Gamefreak" screen just says "Gamefreak" you have V1.0. If your title screen says "Gamefreak Presents" you have version 1.1.
FR/LG V1.0 codes will not work with V1.1 carts/ROMs because with revisions to the ROM, memory addresses in the ROM, which is how the Action Replay overwrites data to create cheats, are in different locations for each ROM version. You have to use 1.1/V2 codes (V2 as labeled by the AR Max Duo) and V1.0 codes with a 1.0 cart/ROM. It's one of the reasons why FR/LG cheats are hard to deal with online because people don't generally label which version the cheats they are posting are for.
Not sure if necroing is allowed on GBATemp, if not it would be a good time to close this thread, since this is the long-awaited solution to these specific problems.
