Using an Envy x360 as a POS terminal. Issues with USB peripherals

[Uhane580t]

I purchased two of these to use as touchscreen POS terminals for our retail store. I need to plug the following USB devices into them: wireless mouse, wired keyboard, UPC scanner and receipt printer. I have the mouse, keyboard  and UPC scanner plugged into a powered USB hub and the receipt printer is plugged into its own port.  All of these devices are new so no ancient drivers to deal with.

I am having intermittent issues with devices not being recognized and the hub is causing some problems on startup. I am waiting until the laptop has a chance to fully start. I am then turning on each USB device and waiting until the sound tells me that it's been recognized before turning on the next device. The USB hub has on/off buttons for each device. I am also waiting a few seconds before using any of these USB devices.

Should I wait until the laptop is powered down before I turn off the power on the hub to these devices? Should I power them up before starting the laptop? Note the receipt printer does not cause the sound (when connected and powered up) so I don't think that's an issue.

Is this too much for the internal USB hardware/software for my device? Is there a better way to set (wire) this up? I need for these devices to work smoothly on a daily basis. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@Uhane580t 

I understand what you're trying to do, but this laptop is not designed to be used this way.  The USB ports are not live all the time, as they would really need to be for this application.

There are options for allowing the PC to disable USB ports to save power: Expand the “USB settings” and you see, “USB selective suspend setting” … This is the default setting for Windows 10. Click on the drop down and select “Disabled” to not allow Windows power management to suspend or power down the USB port … Click “OK” to save setting and close all open Windows.

If that does not solve the issue, then you need to go into the BIOS and ensure any Legacy USB options are enabled.

It that does not do it, then I believe you are stuck -- as the USB ports are simply not going to be live when the laptop is shut down.