Welcome to the Community,
Windows 2008 R2 blocks ICPM (pings) by default, so you need to allow this in the Windows firewall if required.
ESXi presents a virtual hardware platform to the virtual machine (your Windows OS), so there's no reason to install hardware drivers (the guest doesn't see the hardware).
For the USB issue, please see whether http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1022290 can help.
André