Surface Dock Keeps Disconnecting Intermittently

Same issue here - frequent disconnects of network, power and display.

Setup as follows:

Surface book 2 - surface dock (I think gen 1)

Power only - intermittent power loss, white light on plug blinks once and then it comes back on

Power + Ethernet - same, intermittent drops of both ethernet and power, white indicator on plug blinks once

Power + Ethernet + HDMI display - same as above

It started a couple of weeks ago when I started using the laptop a lot more for home working - I'm on teams calls throughout the day and the problem is most acute during these, sometimes it drops every 10 seconds or so, sometimes it might be every half hour. It creates a really unprofessional image and I'm in danger of losing business because of it.

Tonight, I just couldn't get anything done at all, that chime that plays when it drops is driving me up the wall, I've been close to throwing the f****** laptop out of the window a number of times.

However - I have found one solution that SEEMS to have stopped it for the time being, I swapped the direction of the plug so that the trailing lead is going towards me, rather than away from me.   Given this, I tried a few squirts of contact cleaner to see if the contact is somehow less stable when the plug is oriented the other way, but that didn't fix it, as soon as I swap the plug orientation the problem returns.  Very strange. It feels like a clickbait title "I kept on getting disconnected until I discovered this one neat trick..."

Another day of teams calls tomorrow, so I'll send an update if its still stable with the plug this way around or if the problems still occur.

Microsoft should be embarrassed, this is supposed to be a flagship product.  I'm never buying another surface product that's for sure. Unfortunately, given the financial hit my business has taken with covid, I cant justify buying new kit now so I'll have to suffer this piece of **** for the time being.

Pounding my head against the wall more today on this thing. Figured I'd go around and at least update the docks that are still in the building. On the very first dock I touched, I got an error about it failing and to power cycle the dock. I went one step further and disconnected all USB, monitor, sound, and network cables so that ONLY power was plugged in after resetting the power. Troubleshooting that issue, found that the "Surface Dock Integration" under HID devices in Device Manager has a yellow exclamation point and showed this message in device properties: "A driver (service) for this device has been disabled.  An alternate driver may be providing this functionality. (Code 32)" which indicates a registry error. Downloaded the registry file from this doc here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro4-surfdrivers/docking-station-not-detecting-external-monitors/3990cbdb-74b2-4690-be74-356d36303f0b. Still unable to fix the issue in Device Manager even after checking for driver updates (best driver is in use), disabling/re-enabling, uninstalling/restarting, power cycling the dock and the Surface Book. Also still can't update the dock. Anyone from Microsoft listening yet?

I have an update on my particulr issue. 

1. Removing Anker usb c to hdmi adapter from dock 2 got rid of “USB power may not be enough...” message. 
2. I have a few razer products, and was running Synapse 2.0 and 3.0 on my Surface Book 3. Uninstalling all Razer related software got rid of all random disconnects. 

Its been hours. Not one disconnect

I habe a 4k 60hz display as well as 34” uwide panel at 2560x1080. 

To test a new found stabilty, i tried running a 4 k movie over docks network jack, and ran cpu stress test at the same time. 

did it for about an hour. 100 CPU utilization. No issues. 

Do any of you run Logitech or Razer software on affected systems?

I also did a quick search, and looks like Razer Synapse has caused identical issue on laptops other than Surface. Lenovo, dell, etc. 

Hope this can help someome

Hi Everyone, 

this doesn't seem to be an issue just for MS dock.  I have a Plugable Dock- that has the exact same issue.  In my opinion it's the laptop's power management that's at fault here. if I don't do any intensive work, then I don't' get these resets.  the resets get specially bad when I have multiple chrome tabs open.

It wont help. Believe me, I tried!