Keyboard and mouse inputs get dropped for 1 second durations

Alienware 15 laptop, all of my IO devices will stop responding for about a second, all at the same time. While this is annoying, it also has the side effect of "unhooking" these devices from any keyboard/mouse software used for key rebindings, forcing me to restart such software in order to regain functionality. The worst part about it is when using my art tablet, it will drop its input as well about every two minutes or so, and the Wacom drivers absolutely can't recover from that without rebooting Windows.

I've tried every port on this device, on hubs, individually, and in isolation. It appears to be device agnostic.There are no Windows event logs that point to any kind of failure or hardware reset. Additionally, I've tried enabling the hidden "Ultimate Performance" power profile in windows, as well as individually preventing each USB node from being suspended in the Device Manager. Where else should I look to track this problem down? I'm running out of time before I'd have to send the laptop back as defective.