USB Selective Suspend for Windows 10 is a lesser-known feature that more or less does what it says on the tin. With it, you can disable certain USB ports when on battery so you can save power.
This is incredibly useful – when it works correctly. You can automatically suspend devices like fingerprint readers without affecting any of the other devices plugged into your ports. Unfortunately, some users report bugs with the feature that make it remain active when they plug back in. As a result, you may need to fix USB selective suspend with some device manager or Control Panel tweaks.
This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable USB selective suspend in Windows 10 so you can save battery or set your USB ports to always on.
How to Enable or Disable USB Selective Suspend with Device Manager
You can tweak USB Selective Suspend settings via the registry and fix many issues by updating its driver. We’ll show you how to do both today, starting with the latter:
- Open Device Manager
Press Start and then type “Device Manager”. Click the top result.
- Update your “USB Input Device” drivers
In Device Manager, scroll down the list until you find the “Human Interface Devices” section. Expand the heading by clicking the arrow on its left-hand side and look for “USB Input Device”. Right-click “USB Input Device” and select “Update driver”.
- Browse your computer for local drivers
In the update drivers wizard, click “Browse my computer for drivers”.
- Press “Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer”
- Select “USB Input Device” and hit “Next”
- Click “Close”
If you get the message “Windows has successfully updated your drivers”, your USB selective suspend feature should now be working. You can close the wizard and restart your PC.
If you don’t get this message, or USB selective suspend still isn’t working, it’s possible your device does not support the feature. However, you can still continue with the Regedit method below to find out for sure.
- Open regedit
Press Start and then type “Registry Editor” click the top result.
- Create a new key DWORD in the USB key
In your Registry Editor search bar, paste the following address:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB
.Find your device’s PID by right-clicking it in Device Manager and selecting Properties, then “Hardware IDs” in the “Details” tab.
Find the device’s PID in the Registry Editor sidebar, then press Ctrl +F and search for SelectiveSuspendEnabled to check if there is already a registry entry under that name.
If there isn’t, right-click in the sub-folder of “Device Parameters” and choose “New > DWORD (32-bit)”. Name it
SelectiveSuspendEnabled
. - Enable or disable USB selective suspend
Double-click your “SelectiveSuspendEnabled” key and change the value data to one of the following:
1: Enable USB selective suspend
0: Disable USB selective suspendPress “OK” when you’re done.
How to Enable or Disable USB Selective Suspend in Windows 10 via Control Panel
If you’re just looking to enable of disabled USB Selective Suspend, the Control Panel is the easiest route to doing so. For whatever reason, the USB Selective Suspend setting is tucked away in the power menu, so there’s a good chance you’ll need our help finding it. Here’s how:
- Open Control Panel
Press Start and then type “Control Panel”. Click the top result.
- Click “Hardware and Sound”
- Press “Power Options”
- Click “Change plan settings”
Make sure you change the settings for your active plan, or all plans it’s relevant to.
- Press “Change advanced power settings”
- Look for the USB selective suspend settings and enable or disable it
You’ll find it under “USB settings > USB selective suspend setting”. There are two controls, one for battery power, and one for when it’s plugged in. Configure each to suit your preferences and press “OK”.
That rounds up this Windows 10 USB selective suspend tutorial. However, there are many more things you can do to improve your PC’s battery life. If you need some more juice, try the steps in our power throttling guide. You can also set your hard disk to after idle time to a lower value.
Last Updated on February 14, 2022 7:45 pm CET