I am having problems with my Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 not recognizing external storage devices as well as also not recognizing our internet connection. The server had not been used for about two months and was powered off during that time and when brought back up these issues appeared. As you can probably tell from my post I have little to no IT experience and unfortunately do not have the $$$ to pay for a consultant so I am trying this forum. When attaching external drives the server actually recognizes there is a drive on the USB connection but requests the drives for the external drive which I cannot search for as the server also now does not recognize our DSL connection. Both internet access and recognition of external drives were not problems before the server was shut down a couple months back. Computer is an older Dell server (intel xeon cpu 2.8 ghz)

Don't know what hardware you're using but these days with devices like network interface, storage controllers, display adapters that are integrated into the mobo require a chipset driver to make them available to the OS. Generally the second step after installing the operating system. If in your case it was working at one time then something else may be going on. I'd look for bangs ! or ? or device error codes in Device Management. Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional -Microsoft MVP [Windows]

can you check when you attach the external disk are they recognized under the device manager ?, if in that case the PNP manager is able to register the device appropriately. Now all the hardware devices should / will come with their own drivers without them it is impossible to detect any hardware for any OS . Microsoft has builtin some of the drivers and if your device is not falling under the category it prompts you for the driver.