Is this because of USB device that Device Manager is flickering every 2 seconds?

Question

Device Manager on my PC (using Windows 10) suddenly shows high consumption of CPU power and is refreshing itself every couple of seconds. In addition I no longer receive input from MIDI devices connected via USB cable. This happened just suddenly, without me attaching new devices or updating anything.

I read that such behavior of a Device Manager is an indication of its unsuccessful retries to install a (USB?) device. So I started disconnecting and reconnecting my USB devices one by one (I have several, this a music arrangement PC), but Device Manager is still flickering and consuming much CPU. I must admit I didn't restart the machine after reconnecting USB devices but I assume because of their PnP nature this should not be necessary.

Now I wonder if it can be anything else that affects Device Manager. But what? And how can I detect it? But first of all I am trying to understand if such behavior can only be caused by USB or it can be something else.

Answer 1

Answering my own question: yes, this is because of USB and this can be cured. At least in my case.

What helped is an excellent freeware tool USB Device Viewer that showed all registered system devices, active and disconnected. Since most of USB devices are plug-in-play, then it's usually OK to delete them from Windows registry (not just disable, delete). I did that leaving only mouse and keyboard, restarted my machine and after re-connecting USB devices all my MIDI instruments worked fine and Device Manager stopped flickering trying to install a new device.