An external USB hub is a good idea. Especially if it's self-powered, with some kind of plug-in power adapter, not drawing downstream power from the USB controller (like every other USB device does).
Disconnect any USB devices which aren't critical (ie, keyboard and mouse and one removable drive), and plug each USB device into its own dedicated USB controller (that is, only use one of each "pair" of USB ports) to maximize USB stability. This is especially helpful if you use keyboard/mouse interfaces with high USB polling rates.
You may have a misconfigured BIOS setting which operates newer USB controllers in a "legacy" mode. If so, Windows won't load USB drivers at startup, only "as needed", which means that the OS software will impose its own rules and "logic" onto what should be a direct hardware interface.
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[/Korth]