Devices stop detecting at random

[Windrunner]

For some reason I'm having something happening that's hanging whatever wizards and daemons are responsible for adding new hardware/USB devices in Windows 7.

After some point in time that I have yet to ascertain I will not be able to change any hardware without a reboot. If I unplug something and plug it back in, it will not come back on. If I go to 'add new hardware', it sits there and perpetually scans. I haven't figured out which service is responsible for this so I can just restart the service and clear it of whatever gunk has it stuck.

It's a really annoying problem. Especially because I boot quite a bit of stuff up from an old 250 gig SATA-1 drive, so a reboot takes a good 10 minutes, which is horrible when all I wanted was a file from a flash drive.

Uh, this computer is a frequent victim of RDP, runs an OCZ Sabre keyboard, Cyborg R.A.T. mouse, Ideazon Zboard Merc for FPSes, then a bunch of other peripherals including a Wacom Tablet and 3D mouse. So it could be any of that hardware's specialty drivers messing stuff up.

I'd really like to just find the service and toggle it on/off, or kill the process.

How do I fix this?

[Sick Willie]

You might start with the plug and play service.

[Windrunner]

I laughed.

Why the heck did I miss that...I was around when Plug and play first came out in the 90s..

[Sick Willie]