Posting this information in case it’s useful to others.
I was experiencing random micro-stutters and audio glitches (underruns) in Windows 11. Although these occurred sporadically, I could easily reproduce them by:
- Switching power plans
- Opening the Quick Settings panel
- Opening Windows Settings in general
I went through extensive troubleshooting, including:
- Reinstalling Windows 11 three times
- Installing drivers and software one by one, evaluating each
- Testing both the integrated GPU (iGPU) and dedicated GPU (dGPU)
- Disabling ASUS-related apps and services
- Tweaking power plans
- And many more trial-and-error steps
Eventually, I found the culprit thanks to the Windows built-in MSConfig tool. This tool lets you disable non-Microsoft services temporarily. After re-enabling them one by one, I discovered that the VMware USB Arbitration Service was involved in the stutters. I use VMware for work, so most likely you will not have such a service, but the solution may still apply to you if you are experiencing the same issue.
The Actual Problem
After identifying the service, I looked deeper and found that the blame wasn't fully on the VMware service itself. Instead, was partially in how Windows handles USB power management.
In Device Manager, under Universal Serial Bus controllers, many entries have a power-saving option:
✅“Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”
When this setting is enabled, and a USB device is in a low-power state, the VMware USB Arbitration Service experiences a small delay every time it tries to query the device’s state, resulting in micro-stutters and audio glitches at OS level.
The Fix
Disable the USB power-saving option for each USB device that has it:
- Open Device Manager
- Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers
- For each entry:
- Right-click → Properties
- Go to the Power Management tab
- Uncheck: "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"
- Repeat for all entries that show this setting
Result
After disabling USB power-saving for all applicable entries, the stuttering and glitches completely stopped. Although the root issue in my case involved VMware, this kind of micro-freezing could likely be produced by any software that frequently queries USB device states but doesn't gracefully handle devices in sleep mode.
Hope it helps
