[Mark McLeod]

P.S.
Laptop USB is notorious for cutting power to USB ports while the laptop is on battery.

1. Make sure your laptop battery is fully charged and preferably plugged in.
2. Check your power saver settings to avoid power cutbacks when the battery is low.
   • Open the Device Manager. Win 8, hold the Windows key and press the 'x' key to open a menu in the lower-left and select "Device Manager." Using Win 7, open the Start Menu, type "Device Manager" in the search field, and click it.
   • Expand "Universal Serial Bus controllers"
   • Right-click each entry titled "USB Root Hub" and select "Properties"
   • Change to the "Power Management" tab
   • Uncheck the check box next to "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"
   • Press "OK"
   • Repeat this for each "USB Root Hub" entry
   • Reboot the computer
3. If using more than one USB device, i.e., multiple joysticks, distribute the USB load across all the laptop USB ports that you have. Keep critical joysticks on their own USB port.
4. Avoid ganging multiple USB devices up on a single USB hub. Bigger hubs are worse. If used, small hubs are best.
5. Avoid fancy joysticks that draw an excess of USB power. Power hungry fancy sticks or ones with glittery LEDs won't fare as well as plain vanilla generic joysticks.