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

Hi, definitely let MS know. 

From my experience at a school with 300+ Surface Pro 6 and 7 and 7+, and Dock1 and Dock2 for each device and many with multiiple monitors and three screens (including 86" interactive panels), lessons learned:

a) always update your Surface device with the latest Firmware

b) always use active Microsoft Adapters (not passive)

Sleep settings and display settings and power settings make little difference to these issues and most people know how to set them.

I finally have two monitors and my SP7 working faultlessly. The occasional glitch if I've been undocking/docking it all day and facial recognition needs to happen undocked once a day maybe.

Good luck.

Please pass this on to Microsoft though. I've sent links to this forum post to Australia's Microsoft Surface Team (some perks to being a regular business customer).

From reading most peoples problems with the Surface dock 1 or 2 in this thread, it would seem that some, if not most people, has a power plan\sleep issues. Windows, no matter what version, has never done well with going to sleep, ever!

On top of the Windows generations of waking from sleep issues, Windows has had issues particularly with DisplayPort working after coming out of sleep. I say sleep, but honestly, its been known for several years that hibernation is equally as worse if not worse than sleep. Microsoft has never fixed the sleep\hibernate problem with DisplayPort since its iteration as a display adapter since its inception. I'm assuming this extends to USB-C display connections as well since several people in this thread mostly have the Surface dock 2.

My advice for the people having monitor waking issues connected with the DisplayPort or USB-C connections is to go into the power plan for the Surface device and set the monitors to never go to sleep. Either that or completely turn off sleep and hibernation.

Add me to the list. 

My office just upgraded our machines to Surface Book 3 + Surface Dock 2. When I first set everything up, my two external monitors worked fine. When I came back to work the next morning and woke the SB3 from sleep, the external displays showed no signal, even though the settings menu recognized that they were connected. 

That was three weeks ago. Every day since then, I have wasted at least an hour of my time each morning in a seemingly superstitious ritual of unplugging, plugging back in, rebooting, updating, swearing, shopping for Macs on my phone while updates install, rebooting again, adjusting settings, resetting settings, researching the issue online, getting a flashlight and magnifying glass so I can read the model and serial number printed in invisible ink on the bottom of the dock, flipping the dock connector, unflipping the dock connector, detaching and reattaching the SB3 screen, swearing some more, and eventually leaving the office in a huff and working from home. 

Disconnecting and reconnecting the dock and/or display cables can result in a confusing array of responses. Sometimes neither external display works. Sometimes one works. Sometimes the other works. Sometimes, one display will work, but my settings are ignored, and instead of extending the desktop, it mirrors the desktop in the wrong orientation. Sometimes I can get both monitors working properly, but when I repeat the same steps the next day, nothing happens. 

This is my first experience with MS hardware, and suffice it to say that this fiasco is making quite an impression.

I'm the original poster to this now (very large) thread.

By way of update, we have three Surface Dock 2s, and two Surface Dock 1s. 

Some 8 months later, the problem remains for the Dock 2s. They are all complete lemons. I have had several replaced. They simply do not work (originals or replacements). 

It is a lottery each day when we start our tablets as to whose monitors will work and whose will not. Sometimes they do, sometimes they do not. 

I have tried each and every thing in this thread and nothing fixes it. I've updated the firmware so many times that the word "firmware" has lost all meaning to me. 

The Dock 1 - completely fine. No issues whatsoever. 

To say I'm disappointed in the Dock 2 would be a gross understatement. Why on earth would you put out a new product that is so much worse than the old one?

Give this a try for updating the firmware for your Surface Dock. The first link has information and links for downloading the Surface dock firmware for the Surface dock 1 and 2. The second link is for if you somehow get lost and never get to the actual page to download the Surface dock firmware. Make sure you read the first link about downloading the firmware, because when you go to the second link and click download, it will give you an option to download more than one Surface related software that doesn't have anything to do with firmware.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/update-your-surface-dock-58d8723e-eae8-5e8d-c295-f870f7703633

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46703