Advice Win 7 - devices cut out for 2-3 seconds

[SilverHood]

Have a weird problem... my USB mouse will cut out for 2-3 seconds now and then. Also affected at the same time is my headphones... sound from apps cuts, windows sounds do not dissapear. There's events in the event viewer, but they're blank.

If this was XP I could probably diagnose it myself, but never supported Win7 professionally, only been using it for 2 months.

 

[Kryten]

It wouldn't be any different to what would cause it in XP, as that would highly unlikely be a driver or software related issue. If it was, it'd be chipset drivers not being right/absent, however it's more likely a hardware fault such as power short, insufficient PSU crapping out under load/load spikes or other mainboard related issues.
Check in the BIOS for options like "spread spectrum" and try enabling that to see if it makes a difference. Otherwise, first check is drivers, second is run it outside the case for a while and see if the problem disappears.

 

[old.Osy]

There's also an option in BIOS called PnP OS. Set that to Yes. Make sure the USB mode is 2.0 or better. Most likely not enough power over USB or screwy controller/bad drivers.