Bugcheck 9F (usbhub / usbhid) BSOD after Installing Windows 8.1

[mr.natural_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 12/26/2013

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I recently updated from Win8 to Win8.1 (x64) and began receiving sporadic system crashes anywhere from an hour to a couple of days after each system restart.  Examining memory dumps (0x9F - DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE) with WinDbg pointed to usbhub.sys, and further drilling down pointed to usbhid.sys.  Nothing gave an actual indication of which driver caused the crash.  Driver Verifier erroneously pointed to my nVidia video card driver as a possible source of conflict.  Subsequently, I performed a clean install of Win8.1 and experienced the same instability.

After several days of further investigation and a generous application of the process of elimination, I found that unplugging the USB cable from my SUA1500 UPS restored system stability, as did removing PowerChute Business Edition v9.1.0 with the UPS plugged back in.  Sniffing around APC's web site, I found that v9.1.1 of PBE was available.  Installing the new version allowed stable system operation to resume.

The release notes made no mention of any incompatibility between previous versions of PBE and Win8.1, nor did I receive any notification from APC of the availability of the new version (although I receive plenty of marketing hype from them).

Hopefully, this will save others from wasting several days of exasperating troubleshooting.

[mr.natural_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 12/26/2013

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I recently updated from Win8 to Win8.1 (x64) and began receiving sporadic system crashes anywhere from an hour to a couple of days after each system restart.  Examining memory dumps (0x9F - DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE) with WinDbg pointed to usbhub.sys, and further drilling down pointed to usbhid.sys.  Nothing gave an actual indication of which driver caused the crash.  Driver Verifier erroneously pointed to my nVidia video card driver as a possible source of conflict.  Subsequently, I performed a clean install of Win8.1 and experienced the same instability.

After several days of further investigation and a generous application of the process of elimination, I found that unplugging the USB cable from my SUA1500 UPS restored system stability, as did removing PowerChute Business Edition v9.1.0 with the UPS plugged back in.  Sniffing around APC's web site, I found that v9.1.1 of PBE was available.  Installing the new version allowed stable system operation to resume.

The release notes made no mention of any incompatibility between previous versions of PBE and Win8.1, nor did I receive any notification from APC of the availability of the new version (although I receive plenty of marketing hype from them).

Hopefully, this will save others from wasting several days of exasperating troubleshooting.

[mr.natural_apc · Accepted solution]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 2/17/2014

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I've now been running rock-solid for well over a month.  This seems to confirm that PBE is incompatible with my installation of Win8.1.