I have experienced this problem very recently also (on new Clara and Libra devices) and found the Windows 10 setting below.
Do not know whether this will help always as there are other possibilities:
- Recent Motherboard driver updates
- Recent Windows 10 driver updates
- Recent Kobo firrmware updates
- Suddenly defective USB ports
- etc.
For the moment I solved my issues with the above Windows 10 setting combined with a powered USB Hub.
Why? Because this week suddenly also my external USB drives, which are powered by the USB itself, stopped working. So I suspected that the USB ports somehow could not deliver enough power anymore to make the attached USB mass storage devices work.
Note: most BIOSs have a setting to enable the support of USB mass storage devices. It cannot harm to inspect that setting too.