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?

 

[MaxT2]

Thank you for your reply.

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.

The company is much too small for this. We are like 5 or 6, the others are kind of lawyers, I'm software developer (and I easily get annoyed with hardware issues...). There is an "admin" guy who come every now and then, I saw him once over 2 month, but here probably doesn't know anything about these docks since I choose work-dock (pick this mostly because work laptop is a Thinkpad too) and I purchased and own home-dock myself.

GPU Control Panel

I still need to check this a moment when I can take time for this issue.


New evolution (at work then home)
Yesterday I went to office. Work-dock was going into the same issues as initially. Constantly connecting/disconnecting and not being recognised (though mouse and keyboard when through the dock). I was still plugged directly into the wall and not on the initial power strip, so even in this situation, it was having problems. I completely unplugged it, I was about to tell the boss to return this dock and try another. But I tried something: I went to Device Manage and selected option to see "hidden devices". Which shows devices that are not currently connected.
I removed many drivers were greyed out (not connected "devices") and that I could more or less tell were not relevant anymore. Especially things related to USB/USB-keys/USB-hubs (the laptop was used by another company worker before I got it), also removed anything related to both docks, also removed duplicated monitor drivers (looks like a driver is duplicated each time a monitor goes in a different port or something).
Reinstalled work-dock drivers. And suddenly it started working. (I still need to try if it can work on the power strip, someday.)

Today, at home, so with home-dock: again, not Internet, TV detected but not the BenQ monitor. I noticed that the "I-Tec" logo on the USB-C cable that goes into the computer was again facing down. I unplugged it and re-plugged it the same exact way. Problems were still the same. I unplugged it again but paid attention that the "I-Tec" logo is now facing up. Internet is back, BenQ monitor is back, but again, TV is now detected but "Display isn't active". So I need to plug the TV directly to the laptop instead of the dock.
There may simply be something going on with the cable... Or the laptop, since I don't have these issue with my own laptop.

I will to test thing at work again, hoping that they don't break at work every time this thing works at home (and reciprocally).

 

[MaxT2]

So I keep having issues with dock stations:

At work:

• Monitors not working, keyboard and mouse usually working
• Or monitors turning on and off while dock is disconnecting/connecting until they finally remain off.
• Sometimes not Internet.
• I can usually solve these problems by
  • turning computer off
  • disconnecting dock
  • restarting computer
  • going to "Device Manage", "Show hidden devices", uninstalled all greyed instances related to USB (there are typically 2 drivers that keep getting duplicated up to 5 or 6 times. Edit: these drivers are in "Universal Serial Bus controllers" category, drivers "Generic SuperSpeed USB Hub" and "Generic USB Hub".
  • re-plugging the dock stations
    • Last time, even after this whole process, the dock would still have problems, so I plugged it to a USB-A instead of the USB-C port and then it work. I keep feeling like there is something wrong with this laptop's single USB-C.
  • restating the computer.

At home:

• Sometimes no monitors, no Internet, only keyboard and mouse working.
• The problem here is usually easier to solve
  • sometimes by unplugging the USB-C cable and turning it upside/down (relative to the position it was previously plugged)
  • sometimes restarting the computer.
• But the 4K TV, with this dock and this given laptop, is yet never working (not detected or "not active") , even when using USB-A instead of USB-C and needs to be plugged directly on the laptop's HDMI (which doesn't not happen with my personal laptop)

It's kind of stressful that things work so randomly and when I start a day of work I'm never sure if my gear is actually ready to work, and in the case of the work-dock, can even break in the middle of the day...

 

[MaxT2]

+ plugging USB-A instead of USB-C as another downside: this ways the laptop doesn't benefit from power over USB and hence, discharge while using.


+ Edit: I'll edit my previous post with this. The drivers that get installed multiple times and that I frequently need to uninstall are in "Universal Serial Bus controllers" category, drivers "Generic SuperSpeed USB Hub" and "Generic USB Hub".

 

[MaxT2]

At work: The monitors kept going on and off. It now happened every 5 minutes or so. Laptop screen would turn off for a few seconds, then both external screens would turn off for a few seconds. With no guarantee that external monitors come back on. At the same time, there was a USB connecting sound.
This was too distracting to focus on work.

I tried plugging work-dock directly to the wall again, thinking again of the "electrical problem" hypothesis from the beginning, but that did not change anything.

I finally gave up using monitors on work-dock. Plugged the 4K monitor to the laptop, let the 1080p monitor off.

I end up with two docking stations (home-dock and work-dock) where I gave up plugging any monitor...
And also where I'm not sure if the external headset "sound card" will work, or they work randomly ...

 

[MaxT2]

Now, something new, home monitor 1 doesn't work through home-dock anymore.

I also made a thread asking for dock recommandations: https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...tion-2x-or-3x-4k-60hz-stable-drivers.3859769/

 

[MaxT2]

Now:

Home-Dock with work-laptop : No external monitor, no network... mouse and keyboard OK. (even after uninstalling all drivers)
Home-Dock with home-laptop: External monitor and network OK, but no mouse and keyboard.


Why have docks becomes such a mess?

 

[MaxT2]

I managed to bring back home-dock/work-laptop back to "initial problematic situation" by unplugging the SoundBlaster G3 that is attached to it and re-plugging it.

Where's logic?

 

[MaxT2]

Found some improvement with work-dock: Went to Device Management, and for everything that looked like a USB Generic hub something drives (those drivers that multiply), in their properties, there's a power management option that say something like "Allow computer to disable this device to save power". I turn those off.

I does improve stability for work-dock/work-computer, doesn't solve all the other problems.

 

[MaxT2]

So,
- At the beginning, home-dock was doing somewhat fine, most of the problems were with work-dock being unstable.
- Now: Work-dock work more or less fine (thanks to the trick in last message). But home dock has lost half of its features (lost network and monitor on work-laptop, but lost mouse and keybord on home-laptop).

I guess the issues is with both dock re-installing similarly-looking-but-somewhat-different "Generic USB Hub" and such drivers every time I need to switch from a dock to the other.
Any idea ? Are we supposed to always have precisely the same docking station model at work and at home? Any experiences with solving these issues?