Question Problems with Docking Stations in multi-work environments ?

[MaxT2]

Note: I hope this is in the right forum. I thought it was the most appropriate one.

I am struggling with setting up two work environments, one at office, one at home, using the same (work) laptop. The issues seem to come from the docking stations.

Work laptop: Lenovo Thinkpad TP00117A - Intel Core I5 10210U with Windows 11 Pro.

At home

• Dock: I-Tec CATRIPLE4KDOCPD (not sure if it's this: https://i-tec.pro/produkt/catriple4kdockpd/ or this https://i-tec.pro/en/produkt/catriple4kdockpd-2/ )
• External monitor 1: Ben BL BL2711U (monitor/DisplayPort)
• External monitor 2: LG OLED42C3... (television/HDMI)
• Internet: through RJ45 cable (works fine by itself, tested).

At work

• Dock: Lenovo Thinkpad 40AF0135EU
• External monitor 1: Asus PA27....something...
• External monitor 2: Random FHD monitor (doesn't matter)
• Internet: through WiFi only (I don't think my colleagues ever considered having cables).

Initial situation (at home)
Typically, the Internet and External monitor 1 used to work. But External monitor 2 could not work when plugged at the same time as External monitor 1, so the TV HDMI had to be plugged directly in the laptop (which already starts breaking the point of a dock station but I could live with that).

Correction: The TV is actually detected by the dock when both External monitors are plugged, but the TV appears in System > Display as a very small "greyed out" monitor with no resolution option at all. If I go to System > Display Advanced display, I see "Display isn't active".

Change (at work)
Today, I finally received a docking station at work. This morning, the Lenovo dock kept disconnecting and reconnecting and nothing worked (no external monitors, no sound device). Internet work because it's through the laptop WiFi. I spent some amount of time updating firmware, drivers, rebooting... As I was about to give up, I thought of an electrical issue, unplugged the dock from the power strip and plugged it in another plug directly in the wall. This solved the issue.

The problem now (at home)
I come back home, plug work-laptop on its usual home-dock. Now, External monitor 1 cannot be detected anymore and Internet connection is not working, External monitor 2 (TV) now works through the dock, but the image placement is somewhat stretched, part of Windows 11 taskbar is off-screen (vertically andhorizontally.
I tried plugging the Internet RJ45 cable directly on my personal laptop as well as in work-laptop, the cable, router and connexion all work fine. Actually I think that whole dock station works fine with my personal laptop, but with work-laptop, it's a complete mess now. I tried upgrading the home-dock drivers on work-laptop, still no success...

I'm wondering various things now...

• How to solve this so that my laptop can seamlessly be switched between work-dock station and home-dock station?
• Are various dock station brands/models supposed to conflict?
• How could I diagnose this further?

Evolution (at home)
(I guess I'm going to wake up or something...) I simply unplugged the USB-C connector from the dock (not the first time I do this) but for whatever reason, I paid attention that the brand logo on the USB-C plug is on top when re-plugging it. Work-laptop seem no back to the "Initial situation"... Which still has some issues, but it already better.

 

[Ralston18]

One immediate comment/question:

When the laptop is moved between home (wired) and work (wireless) do you change the network adapter between wired and wireless as applicable? Both wired and wireless network adapters should not be enabled at the same time.

= = = =

I suggest taking a look in Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer on the laptop.

Either one or both tools may be capturing some error codes, warnings, or even informational events relevant to the described monitor problems.

Reliability Monitor/History is much more end user friendly and the time line presentation may help identify some pattern(s). For example: dates the laptop was being used at work and dates the laptop was being used at home.

Event Viewer requires more time and effort to navigate and understand.

To help:

How To - How to use Windows 10 Event Viewer | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

There is no need to rush through it all. Key is to look and watch what, if anything, the logs may be capturing.

Compare "when it works" (in whole and in part) with when things are not as they should be.

Also, on the laptop check the GPU's Control Panel configuration settings. Compare between home and work. Ensure that the connectivity (HDM, DP) is correct in both environments.

The laptop may not be fully "switching" between home and work environments.

 

[MaxT2]

Thank you for your reply.

When the laptop is moved between home (wired) and work (wireless) do you change the network adapter between wired and wireless as applicable? Both wired and wireless network adapters should not be enabled at the same time.

I usually leave WiFi on on that specific work-laptop. It only "knows" the WiFi connections from office, and "when" things work this never causes any issue at home.

I suggest taking a look in Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer on the laptop.

Thank you. I didn't not know about "Reliability History" so far. And it's true I tend to forget about checking Event Viewer.
However, I checked both and don't see anything relevant. There are very few errors. I see some SQL Server crash at a moment I wasn't really using it, some Windows update that failed at some point, and I see "Shadow Copy warning that it could not expand storage enough, although Shadow Copy service is turned off".
In Event Viewer I mostly checked "System" I don't remember precisely what other categories may be useful.

I suspect that issues like TV being detected has a monitor but set on "Display isn't active" isn't something that will raise events. (I say that, but I should think more often about Event Viewer anyway.)

There is no need to rush through it all. Key is to look and watch what, if anything, the logs may be capturing.

There, I don't follow. That could be true if that was my one of my personal computers which I would want to perfect. But on work-laptop, there may be rush actually, and if things like Internet and monitors don't work, I can't work, so there won't be any long-time log. If things tend to randomly break, it also annoying when you should focus on actual work. And it may make more sense to simply try other docks rather than wasting days of work trying to fix a failing one.

Though, I'm worried about what I read about dock stations, it seems they became quite unreliable in general for many people. Also, their drivers and software have such cryptic names (and they may come with multiple drivers) that I am not always sure what they are at the moment I want to update or uninstall them.

Also, on the laptop check the GPU's Control Panel configuration settings. Compare between home and work. Ensure that the connectivity (HDM, DP) is correct in both environments.

I am not sure what GPU's Control Panel is and how to access it. I'm used to some NVidia GPU control panel. But here the "Display Adapters" are Intel(R) UHD Graphics and USB-C Triple-4K Dock.

 

[Ralston18]

Two immediate thoughts:

Since the laptop is indeed a work laptop I would think that the problem(s) need to be addressed by your work IT folks (if any). Doing things on your own may get you into trouble.

As for rushing - the intent is to be careful and methodical. Very sure that you have deadlines etc. to meet. However, rushing into doing things can and does backfire. E.g. downloading "fixes" via the internet etc..

It does take time and effort to work through the logs (Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer). Keep looking.

GPU Control Panel: Right click an empty area to the desktop. A menu should appear with the bottom choice being "Show more options". Select and click that option.

The next menu should have a listing XXXX Control Panel where XXXX is the GPU manufacturer's name.

Select/click that menu item to open the GPU's configuration settings. Do so first at work and then at home.

Again pay attention to all of the configuration settings.

Docking stations do make things a bit more cumbersome: I would be curious about that "USB-C Triple-4K Dock".....

Just what does that do?