How to find out which USB device keeps connecting and disconnecting?

[jebus197]

OK It's been a while since I was last here. But nice to see good old Neowin is still up and running! Anyway the title pretty much says it all.  How can I find out which USB device on my PC keeps randomly connecting and disconnecting? I have a small media PC connected to my TV and am running several USB devices via powered hubs from this (some TV Tuners, some external drives, a USB conference type microphone so I can use Skype on my TV etc.). Well anyway the point is I guess, that I'm running quite a few USB devices (maybe 10-12 or so in total, via seperate (powered) USB hubs and these hubs, along with my media PC (as you might expect of such an arrangement) are tucked away in discretely in a somewhat inaccessible location. So manually plugging and unplugging everything one at a time isn't really an option. However every now and then I will get a Windows (10) 'device disconnected' notification sound. However when I look at device manager, everything seems to be in order - and I can't really spot anything that's missing from the list. So whatever keeps disconnecting, seems to reconnect silently (without a corresponding 'device connected') notification sound.

 

So is there any app that can help me monitor USB activity (as in log which specific devices are connecting and disconnecting) and that might help me to resolve this issue? It can be quite disconcerting when I'm watching a movie with my underseat subwoofer and my speakers on a movie setting and I suddenly get the crashing sound of a very large stone hitting some water (it's part of a built in Windows nature theme I think.) But whatever the case may be, it is definitely the 'device disconnected' notification that I'm hearing. Can anyone please assist?

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

What exactly 12 things do you have connected? How many hubs do you have? Sounds very odd to have multiple hubs.

 

Can you disconnect everything, and add them back one by one? 

[xendrome]

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

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

There are a few things I can think of, off the top of my head:
 

• One of the attached USB devices is failing.
• One of the attached USB devices' supplemental power supply is failing.
• One of the attached USB hubs is failing.
• One of the attached USB hubs is supplemental power supply is failing.
• One of the USB cables is failing (rare, but can occur due to strain on cables and connectors).
• A problem with the computer's hardware.
• A problem with the computer's software.

Given that there are 10-12 attached USB devices, not including hubs, plus the computer, you have a very complex environment to troubleshoot.

 

What I would probably try to do is simplify the environment by removing the USB hubs, installing additional USB cards into the computer, and running direct connections to the attached USB devices.  This allows you to remove the USB hubs, their power supplies and the cabling from the equation, and troubleshoot each of the directly-attached USB devices without having to worry about intermediaries such as the hub.

 

If a directly-attached device that has a supplemental power adapter turns out to be the failing device, try replacing its power supply before replacing the entire device.

 

Regards.

Aryeh Goretsky