Since Windows last update i've been having major problems with my USB devices turning off or not working/ recognised, I solved the problem eventually ,see below . The Power Management was the cause of the USB problems. Windows is set to shut down your USB controller to save power by default, sometimes it won’t be able to power it back up. So I tried following steps to prevent Windows from “managing” power to your USB controller or the devices I had to untick all USB boxes in device manager / Universal Serial Bus controllers / USB hub properties power manager and untick all individually , do it for USB devices connected , this sorted my problem and now all work as they should Hope it helps other with similar issues .
There are additional two additional things that help further: - "Fix It" tool by Microsoft: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17614/automatically-diagnose-and-fix-windows-usb-problems - Some devices with old drivers do not like "Fast Startup" feature, so they work after Restart, but not so well after shutdown/startup. So to some people disabling Fast Startup might help.
I am glad it helped. Aside from sim racing my other passion is music, and external audio cards/interfaces are USB most often, so getting glitches out of the way is essential. There are couple of additional tweaks on top of Narrowbackwing's suggestions. * dIsable usb selective suspend under Advance power plan options * For Fanatec users, I had problems with driver itself, and had to reinstall driver. The symptom - if you try to adjust any setting in controller panel, elevation prompt pops up and nothing nice happens. If you hit that, try uninstalling. Also, I noticed Fanaleds not always do pedal vibration right, so make sure to run Fanaleds diagnostic test, and again, re-install the software. * Lastly, this is audio specific. On one computer with USB audio interface this caused problem. Unchecking this checkbox helped. Cheers!