Driver Issues coming out of Sleep Mode for Windows 8

[TrophyNostalgia]

Hey guys so I've been having a myriad of minor problems for quite some time with my laptop. I want to say it began after I updated to Windows 8.1. It seems that whenever my Dell XPS 17 laptop comes out of sleep mode some drivers (or something) aren't being properly woken up. For example many (but not all) of the times I open my laptop's lid my Internet connection will conk out, it will say it's connected, but nothing can access the internet signal (browsers say web page cannot be displayed etc...) If I disconnect and attempt to re-connect it will say that it is unable to connect. Whenever this happens I have noticed that the USB ports on the back of my laptop also stop working. Additionally if I have headphones plugged in, my laptop will act as if the headphones aren't plugged in and will play sound from my speakers. Additionally I updated my integrated graphics card to the latest driver and it upon coming out of sleep mode was also causing issues.

All of this is fixed by restarting my computer.

However I hate to leave my laptop running and never close the lid. But it is getting extremely frustrating having to restart my laptop every time that I want to use it.
Some additional oddities include that if I try to view my update history, for Windows Update, it does not list the recent updates it has installed. I think it stopped keeping track of the update history since I updated to Windows 8.1.

Does anyone have any suggestions for anything that could fix these issues, as it seems to be tied to one thing in particular. I've repeatedly done all Windows Updates and attempted to update drivers where possible. Under device manager there is one "Other Device" that has an exclamation mark, and is listed simply as "Unknown" and I have no idea how to resolve that. I'm open to any suggestions, I've tried plenty at this point in time.

Thanks!

 

[sd173]

This is really strange, especially the "Unknown" "Other Device". Have you tried scanning your laptop with a full system scan through antivirus software? I'm not really sure how to go about fixing the other issues, but do you possibly have an old phone or something you occasionally plug in to sync to or charge from your laptop?

 

[TrophyNostalgia]

Back when the laptop was running Windows 7 and Windows 8 I had plugged my HTC Trophy Windows Phone 7.5 into the computer, but I don't see why that would still persist in the device manager. I scan for viruses monthly, and am quite thorough. I've never had any infections on this laptop. (Just to give a little background, I work with IT services on my college campus so I'm far from technologically illiterate (not necessarily a professional by any means), but I've tried multiple things, and just can't seem to pinpoint the issue).

I think the thing that frustrates me is that it's not consistent. There are times where I'll open my laptop's lid and everything seems to be working fine. But more often than not something conks out.