Some older versions of Windows are incompatible with the adb.exe file that is included in the platform-tools folder of the more recent android sdks. I ran into this issue with Windows 7. The fix in this case is to download an older version of adb.exe. This may require downloading an older android sdk to your computer then replacing the adb.exe file from the platform-tools folder of your download to the platform-tools folder of the android sdk used by your version of android studio or whichever IDE you are using.