Laptop won't wake from sleep when external Keyboard and Mouse are plugged in via USB Hub. How to fix?

We have an ASUS Zenbook UX305FA laptop running Windows 10 that is able to be woken from sleep with an external Keyboard and Mouse when they are plugged-in directly into their individual USB ports.

However, after plugging in a USB Hub and then plugging the external Keyboard and Mouse into the USB Hub, the laptop will no longer wake up from sleep with the external Keyboard or Mouse. It only wakes up if the built-in laptop keyboard is pressed. However, as this laptop is being used as a Desktop, the laptop lid is kept closed at all times, which is why we need to be able to wake the laptop using the external keyboard and mouse. We need the other USB ports on the laptop to be free, which is why we need to plug the mouse and keyboard via the USB Hub.

In Device Manager, the "Power Management" settings for both the external Keyboard and Mouse are set to "Allow this device to wake the computer" under "Keyboards" and "Mice and other pointing devices", respectively. Under "Universal Serial Bus controllers", the "Generic USB Hub" has that setting dimmed and cannot be set.

How can we get the Keyboard and Mouse to wake the laptop from sleep when plugged in via a USB Hub?


Open an elevated command prompt (admin mode).

  1. Type in powercfg/devicequery wake_programmable

  2. Check to make sure the USB keyboard connected to the USB hub shows up on that list, which would confirm it can indeed wake up your laptop from sleep.

  3. To check what is already enabled, type in powercfg /devicequery wake_armed

  4. Type in powercfg /deviceenablewake "ExactKeyboardName" with ExactKeyboardName being the full and exact name (including parentheses, if any) of the USB keyboard that appeared in step 3 above (make sure the name is wrapped in quotes).

  5. If more than one USB keyboard showed up in the list in step 2, then repeat step 4 with each USB keyboard name.

Try now.


We had this same issue with some Dell laptops. Using a USB hub with an external power source solved this for us.