Unable to Connect to any External Drives

Win 11 Pro 64 bit 24H2
Dell Precision Laptop

Windows no longer connects to any external drives. They show up in Device Manager, but are not detected by windows explorer, or disk manager virtual disk manager despite numerous scans. I've tried plugging in to every USB port on the machine without success. Rebooting didn't help. I did a Repair Install using Windows Update, but I still can't connect to Flashdrives, Solid State, or any External HDDs.

First, how many external drives do you have plugged in? If more than one, disconnect all external devices INCLUDING any usb hubs. Plug in one flash drive directly into usb port.. Is that drive recognized and accessible?
If it is, IMO it would point to a power issue ie:not enough power from PS to run multiple drives OR if you've been using a hub, it will have to be a powered hub to provide power to the usb devices connected to it..

Remove all external drives. Go to Device Manager>click view>click show hidden devices. Non-present devices appear with a ghosted icon. Expand the "Disk drive" section. To manually remove these ghost devices, Right-click on each non-present device and select ‘Uninstall’ in the fly-out menu.

Do the same thing for "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" category and "Universal serial bus devices"

OR
You can use a tool to remove them all at once. Remove "Ghost Devices" from Device Manager...

Restart computer. Plug in flash drive again. Is it recognized?

Good advice.

Also, check Disk Management to see if they're recognised and assigned a drive letter

… and, just make sure this is all in order