USB device sporadically disconnects/reconnects on win 8.0

[dgs3333]

First of all, hello to everyone, as I have just registered on this forum and this is my first post.

Here's my situation and hope someone can please lend a hand:

I've had a sim racing rig setup for about a year but hadn't been able to even switch it on for the past few months. A few days ago I switched it back on again and after updating everything (basically Avast antivirus, Mozilla Firefox, Java and Windows updates) my USB sim racing wheel (Fanatec CSR Elite Wheel) has been randomly disconnecting for about a second and reconnecting again while playing a game (mainly iRacing, but also Grid 2), which is very annoying because while it's disconnected the car wheels turn completely left and usually make me crash. It has only happened while paying a game, never while doing someting else on the pc.

I've tried googling for a solution, but after trying several things like disconnecting other USB devices, reinstalling or updating drivers, connecting the wheel to other USB ports or deactivating windows power saving options in the device manager, it´s still happenning.

In the hope that it can help find the cause, I've captured a usb event trace with logman (*.etl file) during which it happened twice towards the end. I'd very much appreciate it if anyone who has the knowledge to understand the file could take a look at it and give me their opinion, because I lack the knowledge to understand it myself. You can download the file from here. It's compressed into a 7MB zip file, so it needs to be unziped.

Anyway, I really hope someone can help me, because I can see this thing driving me crazy until I somehow figure out what's wrong.

Thanks.

 

[ArazelEternal]

I had a similar issue on my Toshiba Satellite laptop. Turns out there are some revisions of Intels XHCI USB 3.0 controller that dont operate correctly and will cause that sporadic disconnect/reconnect when there is even just a semi-high power device connected to the USB port. It was said to be a driver issue and Intel knew about it, but had no plans to fix it.

If you have an Intel USB controller on your motherboard this may end up being your issue as well.

 

[dgs3333]

Hi ArazelEternal,

Thanks for your reply.

As far as I can tell from the specs, my motherboard has 2 Fresco FL1009 chips for handeling the usb 3.0 ports, so no Intel, and I have the wheel connected to a usb 2.0 port anyway, so I understand the problem you mention shouldn't be the cause in this case.

 

[ArazelEternal]

Well, just because it isnt Intel doesnt mean it cant have a similar issue.

Judging by how you say you've tried multiple things in your post, Id almost have to say its a hardware issue, or something weird that Windows is doing. Next thing Id recommend is to look into an external self-powered USB hub. Plug that into it and see if it changes the way it acts at all. Next step would be a add in PCI USB card.

 

[dgs3333]

I'll keep that in mind thank you.

I think I might be getting slightly ahead of myself though. I probably should make sure it's not a problem in the wheel's hardwarde so, just to rule that out, I'm going to try it with my laptop to see if it still happens.

 

[ComputerGeek]

Also check if there is a BIOS update for your computer