Troubleshooting multiple monitors on a Surface Dock 2 (Surface Pro 7)

Hi. Is this for a SurfacePro 7?

Hello All,

I tried many different combinations of cords and connections and adapters and I found that the best for a dual setup is a USB-C to HDMI and USB-C to DisplayPort. 

After a few hours of trial and error, I figured out that the reason most of us cannot see picture out of the monitors even though the surface device detects it is because of the refresh rate. I noticed that my monitors automatically jump to the max (144hz). After going into advanced display settings, you can adjust it to lower the rate to just below 60hz (mine is 59.940hz).

In order to do this, you need to have a third monitor (your surface device) available to access the settings for the other monitors.

Possible fix.

Current  setup Surface Dock 2 with Surface Laptop 3.

Same issue: both monitors detected by Windows but no display on one of them. 

Went thru tech support with Microsoft. Did the round of updating everything, rebooting, reinstalling, etc.

Had the original Surface Dock that works with no issues with both monitors. Also tested the usb-c cables to ensure they are not the problem.

After being annoyed at the problem i actually returned the Surface Dock 2 and bought a new one but had the same exact issue!!

What I did to fix?

Reading some of the posts here I found that the Windows Intel Iris driver was bad so tried to install the latest directly from Intel but the problem persisted. However it did point me at playing around with the driver. I found out that setting up the refresh rate to 75 HZ actually made both monitors respond.

I have been doing tests. Disconnecting and rebooting, while leaving the display rate at 75 HZ has made the dock work with both monitors. At this point I truly believe this is a bug. I'm still a bit hesitant about keeping the dock as I don't know what other issues it may have.

Lastly, I know other monitors support different refresh rates but the point is that the dock may have issues with the default setup. Try changing the refresh rates to see if they are picked up.

I have the exact opposite issue happening where my direct cable is not working but the one with an adapter is.

Hi, Robert,

Thank you for your help. See my comments above about how I fixed the issue.

While buying more expensive cables might help, I don't think this is really about that. I think it's a Windows OS problem.

Old setup: PC (Surface Pro 7) > Surface Dock 2 > 2 cheap USB-C to DisplayPort cables > 2 Dell monitors.

On startup, the Surface logo appears on BOTH screens. So it's working fine at this point. By the time you get to login, one screen is no longer working. Windows apparently thinks it is sending the signal to the non-working screen though (for example, the wallpaper is stretched the right way, and the mouse disappears over the edge of the screen as you'd expect if both screens were working). Rebooting the dock fixes the issue. After clearing my registry for the Dock 2, simply undocking-redocking with the Surface Connect reverse also worked.

New setup: PC > Surface Dock 2 > 1 cheap USB-C to DisplayPort > Monitor #1 (with MST, i.e., DisplayPort daisy chaining enabled) > 1 cheap DisplayPort to DisplayPort > Monitor #2.

Works perfectly fine. No need to power cycle the dock, no toggling Shift-CTRL-Alt-B, no undock-redock, no new cables.

While this is a dumb issue that I think MS should fix, I can't say I'm not happy.

But my point is that it looks like it has something to do with the OS, not (just) the hardware.

Anyway, I'm glad you also found a solution. I just want to leave this one in the comments for those for whom the MST/daisy chaining solution might be the ticket.

Andrew