USB issues with HP IR receiver

Every now and then my IR receiver will fail with errors like this in dmesg:
device descriptor read/64, error -71
device not accepting address 12, error -71

When the device does show up in lsusb:
0471:060c Philips (or NXP) Consumer Infrared Transceiver (HP)

I have not ever been able to track down the issue so if anyone has any ideas please let me know.
Tried so far:

• unloading ehci_hcd kernel module (no longer works as the module is integrated into the kernel)
• adding acpi=off to the kernel line in the grub config
• adding noapic to the kernel line in the grub config

Some suggestions have been to run a powered USB hub but I don't want to do that on a sleek HTPC build. I don't reboot that often so I can live with it but a solution would be good.