Win 11: USB devices cutting out and how to (hopefully) fix it

[1Sascha]

Because this has happened to me again last night and while I was in the middle of a mission (once in IL-2, once in another game), I thought I'd leave what I found out here in case someone else runs into similar problems.

 

I'm on a pretty much brand new system (Win 11 Pro, built late March 2022) and all my USB devices are brand new as well. What will happen is that sometimes one or more of my USB devices will randomly disconnect. Sometimes they immediately re-connect on their own, sometimes I have to re-plug them to get them back. Happened with pretty much all the many devices I have connected, except for my keyboard and my Crosswind pedals for some reason. Although the Crosswinds only arrived last week, so maybe they just didn't have the chance to "fail" yet.. ?  

 

Happened to:

VKB Joystick

PS3 Eye camera for OpenTrack

 

TM TWCS throttle

Razer Viper 8k

^ These last two are connected via my monitor's 4-way 3.0 hub, but they did cut out individually before (for example:the throttle would work fine while the mouse wasn't recognized). So I don't suspect the hub is defective. Also.. the monitor is just as new as the rest of my rig.

 

I suspected some sort of Windows power-savings shenanigans so I IDed both the throttle and stick in the "devices and printers" section, then looked them up in device manager to disable the "Windows may shut down device to save power"-checkmark.

 

 

Thought that had it fixed, but last night this BS came back to bite me in my virtual ass...

 

Looked around on the web and found this guide:

https://4ddig.tenorshare.com/usb-recovery/how-to-fix-usb-disconnecting-and-reconnecting.html

 

which seems to address pretty much exactly what I'm dealing with.

 

Following the guide, I switched my Windows power settings from "balanced" to "high", which still has the "USB selective suspend" setting enabled for some reason. Went in there and disabled that thing.

Next I went back into the device manager and checked all entries under the "USB Controller" headline. To my surprise, all entries that had the Power Management tab were still all set to "Allow computer to turn off this device..." So I disabled that setting for every item that had it enabled.

 

This is about as much as I can think of (or get out of that guide I posted) short of re-installing USB controller drivers or start messing with the BIOS. The latter of which shouldn't be necessary anyway, since I already checked in there and didn't find any unusual or any "low power consumption"-leaning settings enabled.

 

Not sure if I have this solved now and if anyone out there knows more about this, I'd be grateful for more insights.

 

 

EDIT: This is turning int a bit of an obsession I guess, but WTH?

I went back into device manager again and checked the entries in the "Human Interface Devices" category. Turns out there are some in there that also still had the "Win may shut down blah, blah" setting enabled. Probably overkill, because I had already disabled this crap on all the associated USB controllers anyway, but since I wanted to make sure, I disabled this setting on all the entries in the HID section as well.

 

 

 

S.

 

 

Edited May 13, 2022 by 1Sascha

[jollyjack]

Time someone makes a tool app to set this function off, or in the game?

[1Sascha]

16 minutes ago, jollyjack said:

Time someone makes a tool app to set this function off, or in the game?

... or for MS to include a "don't mess with my !$§**## USB-devices"-button in Windows ... ?

 

S.

[FlyingH]

Do you have to redo the whole tapdance after W updates, you think?

[1Sascha]

11 hours ago, FlyingH said:

Do you have to redo the whole tapdance after W updates, you think?

I might have to do it now, it seems. Booted the PC up this morning and now the PS3 camera took 5 or 6 attempts of re-plugging before it worked again. I do suspect that it is the culprit here, since it was the first device to cause trouble and all the others only very occasionally cut out on me (maybe once or twice in over a month). Contacted the Delanclip-guy today who sold it to me, let's see what his response it.

 

I also ran into a helpful guy on a HOTAS discord and after he gave me some pointers, I plugged the Razer Viper 8k into a 3.1 port on the mobo (it ran through my monitor's 4-way, 3.0 hub before) and plugged the IR-LED clip into a different port as well. Don't think that thing will draw a lot of juice, but it was running through my keyboard's 2.0 pass-through before for cable-convenience reasons.

 

The silly bit is that this seems related mostly to the camera's built-in microphone, which I don't need at all. Just now I got another error for that mic, but the camera itself worked. I disabled the microphone in Windows, but I had done that before and it didn't solve the issue.... ?

 

Plus: Both my PC and all my USB-devices are brand new (none much older than a month) - except for the PS3 Cam which, I think, is a used product that the guy modifies with an IR-filter and then sells on.

 

Thing is: I just re-checked TrackIR5 prices over here and they're seriously insane these days. If you can even find them in stock, they start at around €260 for the barebones version (without the ProClip). And I'm definitely not going to pay that much for, basically, a lo-res webcam.

 

Trackhat seems like an interesting low cost alternative, but it also seems to be vaporware, since they still have their stuff on "pre-order" status and state a shipping date of "April 2022".

 

 

S.

Edited May 15, 2022 by 1Sascha

[DragonDaddy]

If you’re using a USB hub is it powered?

[1Sascha]

On 5/15/2022 at 5:37 PM, DragonDaddy said:

If you’re using a USB hub is it powered?

I'm pretty sure it's powered, yes. It's my IIyama Red Eagle's 4-way hub and when I still had the Razer mouse plugged into it, the DPI indicator LED on its underside was still lit when the PC was off and the monitor in stand-by... so I'm pretty sure it's a powered hub. Now I only have my TM throttle running through that hub. Everything else is plugged into the mobo except for the Delanclip which I had to plug into one of my 3.0 front-panel USB sockets. How much power can 3 tiny LEDs draw, right...? ?

 

EDIT: I wish I could prove it, but I'm nearly certain that the camera is to blame. After re-plugging it a couple of times, Windows had of course "forgotten" that I had deactivated its microphone. This thing was pretty much always the cause of driver errors/disconnects on that camera. So I deactivated it again and since then I've had no disconnects.

 

S.

Edited May 16, 2022 by 1Sascha

[1Sascha]

Update: Delan Engineering replied to me today, explaining that the CL Eye driver I'm using (per their installation instructions) might be at fault since it's old and unmaintained. Apparently, there's now a newer driver out with direct support for the PS3 Eye in Opentrack and he sent me instructions on how to install that thing. Let's see if that will quiet things down.

 

 

S.

[jollyjack]

newer than this one: CL Eye Driver 5.3.0.0341? 

[simfan2015]

FWIW.

Randomly disconnecting USB devices can also be caused by a (device) hardware malfunction.

This happens once-in-a-while with mice (because of wear).

If you have multiple USB and other (BR ...) devices connected it can be tricky to track down exactly which one is causing the issue.

I use (free) utilities from NirSoft (nirsoft.net) that a.o. offer utility :

USBDeview

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html

It will show you e.g. the timestamp of all USB devices when those were connected and ... disconnects.

If the cause it software/drivers it is still usefull to be 100% sure which USB device(s) is causing the trouble.

 

But if you are using an USB HUB : some USB devices may not be compatible a hub/splitter.

Powered or not.

But indeed, also the HUB itself can be(come) defective.

 

Edited May 29, 2022 by simfan2015

[dburne]

One thing to watch for. Windows is really, really bad in that with any big update to Windows it will reset all USB devices into a power saving mode. Sneaky it is. So one will need to go into each USB device in device manager and uncheck the power saving option. Usually this happens with each Creators Update but I have seen it happen also in other updates. Bit of a time consuming task to go through each USB device to check but well worth it imho.

[1Sascha]

2 hours ago, simfan2015 said:

Randomly disconnecting USB devices can also be caused by a (device) hardware malfunction.

I don't want to jinx it, but....

 

As mentioned earlier, I had already suspected that the PS3's microphone was the main culprit at the center of it all, since that's where I got regular error messages early on and "driver couldn't be loaded" or something to that effect and that would then seem to mess with other USB devices. For this reason, I had deactivated the mic a while ago (don't need it anyway) and had a bit of peace afterwards, but then things started cutting out again more regularly.

 

While trouble-shooting, I did re-plug some stuff (like the Viper 8K from my hub into the mobo) but while trying out that stuff, I must've disconnected the PS3 Eye as well and re-plugged it into the other 2.0 socket on my board. Which, of course, made Windows forget that I had deactivated its mic. When I re-checked everything around the time the Delan guy answered me, I saw that it was active and that I was getting errors from that damn mic again, so I went and de-activated it in Windows again.

 

Since then (knock on so much wood, it's not even funny) I've only once had the mouse not coming on at system start-up, needing a re-plug. Other than that, it's been smooth sailing and even the PS3 Eye has always worked when I fired up Opentrack. And I do have even more stuff connected to my PC now (keyboard, mouse, PS3 Eye, VKB Stick, Rift-S VR-set, IR-clip plus TM throttle and MFG pedals through the monitor's hub), but things seem pretty normal.

 

If I do run into this crap again for some reason, I'll probably install the newer drivers he recommended, but until then, I won't make any changes.

 

S.

Edited May 29, 2022 by 1Sascha