Asix driver become unresponsive

My ethernet adapter goes dead every once in a while, and I am trying to debug. I am using factory drivers with kernel 4.4.126-48-default.
Here are the symptomps

  1. The USB ethernet adapter stops working, no lights, unplug-replug doesn’t work, not messages in dmesg about when I unplug-replug. Needs reboot. dmesg has a bunch of errors like this,
 1828.505237] asix 1-4:1.0 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized): Failed to enable software MII access                                                                             
 1838.505218] asix 1-4:1.0 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized): Failed to enable hardware MII access                                                                             
 1843.505221] asix 1-4:1.0 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized): Failed to enable software MII access                                                                             
 1853.505201] asix 1-4:1.0 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized): Failed to enable hardware MII access                                                                             
 1858.505066] asix 1-4:1.0 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized): Failed to enable software MII access                                                                             
 1868.505167] asix 1-4:1.0 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized): Failed to enable hardware MII access
  1. trying # modprobe -rf asix] (asix module has no dependants) just hangs without any output.
  2. powertop] also hangs on initialization.

  3. killall upower] seem to solve the problem. (After that the rmmod and powertop commands work, and reloading the module make the ethernet adapter work.

I’d like to fix this issue, which I assume is related to power modules, but not sure how to fix.