Windows 7 not allowing me to use my USB

There are certain things on my HP that I am having trouble with now that Windows 7 has been installed once again and I hope that someone reading this has some suggestions.

For about a year before yesterday morning I had Windows 7 installed on my 64x HP PC and all was fine. But yesterday morning I got my old P4 out of the closet and decided to wipe 7 and install Windows Server 08 with my old P4 as the client running XP. Then I was offered another PC that is significantly better than this P4 so I put Win 7 back on the HP with intentions of replacing the P4 with the new AMD box.

These "things" are device recognizancian.
- First, there are camera card readers built into the front of the HP box. They showed in "Computer". But they are not there now.
-Second, I have a USB HD. I store all of my data on it. When I plug it in now the computer makes those beeps as it does when it recognizes a new USB device but it won't show up in "Computer" either.

Anyway, that's the background. Thank you , in advance, to anyone who has ideas of what I can do to resolve this.

By camera card readers you probably mean SD card readers. HP usually uses Ricoh card reader drivers, you can google for those or try the driver linked on this page.

Clean Install Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on dv9502tx driver prob... - HP Support Forum

or here

Laptop Drivers: HP

As for the usb HD, the drivers should be installed as part of the chipset driver. If you have an Intel chipset, you can download and use their chipset identification utility, then download and install the appropriate driver.

On second thoughts if you tell us the make and model, somebody will help locate the model specific drivers.

Also, check in disk managemet for the USB drive. It may just need a drive letter to be seen in computer.