I fixed random USB disconnects in Windows by changing these 5 settings
You'd think, with USB being around since the late '90s, that Microsoft would have figured out how to make it work reliably by now. We've had no such luck, sadly. Many a Windows user has experienced random USB drop-outs on their PCs.
Your Bluetooth stutters, your USB drives disconnect and reconnect for no obvious reason, and why do you have to unplug and reinsert your keyboard at least once a day to get it working again? These are all good questions, but it's probably better to just tweak these settings and get on with your life.
Disable USB selective suspend in your power plan
The main suspect in this hunt for the one killing your USB connection is a feature called "selective suspend" which, as the name suggests, lets Windows selectively power down some USB devices while leaving others alone. Sounds reasonable right? The problem is that sometimes Windows suspends a device you're actively using.
Other times it suspends devices fine, but then the device doesn't want to wake up again without physically re-plugging it. In some cases, sending the suspend command to a device just makes it disconnect and immediately reconnect again. I had a USB SSD that did that and would randomly cause a disconnection and reconnection chime at the worst time.
The good news is that turning this feature off is easy. Open the Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Edit power plan > Change advanced settings, and then disable USB Selective Suspend.
Remember to apply your changes by clicking "OK" and you should no longer have USB devices turning off, albeit at a higher total power cost.
Stop windows from turning off USB hubs to save power
Even if you disable selective suspend, Windows can still turn off USB hubs as a whole. Several ports are affected when one hub controller is put to sleep. In order to disable this feature, open Device Manager and expand the Universal Serial Bus Controller segment. We're looking for entries under this segment called "hubs." So a generic hub or a SuperSpeed hub would both be example.
Double-click on each of these to open its properties and switch to the "Power Management" tab. Here you want to disable the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option by unchecking the box, and then clicking "OK."
Of course, you might not want to disable this feature for all the hubs if only some devices are causing issues. You can use a tool like the USB Device Tree Viewer to check which hub the errant USB device is using and only change the setting for that particular internal hub.
Turn off PCIe link state power management
This one doesn't seem related to USB at first, but if your computer has a USB card or internal controller connected through the PCIe bus, then disabling PCIe link state power management can prevent a situation where that USB controller is powered down when it shouldn't be.
To disable it, go back to the same place you turned off USB Selective Suspend, but this time lookg for "PCIe link state power management" and disable it.
This fix is particularly helpful on gaming PCs and systems with lots of high-speed USB devices attached simultaneously, like SSDs. I've also seen it help systems using VR headsets, USB DACs, and capture cards that demand a stable connection.
Disable Fast Startup to prevent buggy USB initialization
"Fast Startup" is at this point a legacy feature that's causing all sorts of headaches even today. The feature is basically a variation on the idea of hibernation , and when you shut your computer down, it saves the state of the Windows kernel to disk so that when you boot up again you can pick up from where you left off, without all that pesky, time-consuming Windows startup stuff going on.
The problem is that not all of your USB hardware (and other stuff not relevant to our discussion) likes how Fast Startup works. So you may find your USB devices disconnecting or misbehaving if you shut down with this feature disabled.
Honestly, considering few people regularly shut down their computers, and that this was really only useful for mechanical hard drives, everyone should disable it or check that it's disabled.
To disable Fast Start-up, open the Control Panel. Then go to Power Options > Choose what the power buttons do, then untick "Turn on fast start-up."
You may need to click "Change settings that are currently unavailable" before Windows allows you to disable Fast Startup.
Update chipset and USB controller drivers
If these settings tweaks don't work, then the next thing to try is an update of your computer's chipset drivers. Especially if you're using the ones that Windows automatically installed. Head to your motherboard or laptop manufacturer's website, find your specific model, and install the latest chipset drivers they have, which include the USB controller drivers. With better drivers, Windows might do a better job of managing your USB connections.
