Surface Dock Keeps Disconnecting Intermittently

Anonymous
2020-01-10T16:44:40+00:00

Microsoft,

What is going on with this thing?

I have had the Surface Dock for two months now. Purchased it to go with my Surface Laptop 1. 

Every day.... and I mean every day, this thing disconnects itself from my Surface Laptop, my monitor goes black, my usb peripherals disconnect, and my network goes down... and then in one second everything magically reconnects. 

Sometimes it only happens 5 times a day. Other days it happens like a gazillion.

Once it first started happening, I scoured the internet looking for a solution. I replaced the dock, I updated the firmware, I connected it to a different power source, I've power cycled, I've turned the cord around - etc. No matter what I do it keeps happening. 

And there is no good answers on this message board that seems to fix this issue. I have read them all. 

What is going on with this thing?

Right now, just so y'all know, this thing is only acting as a power source for my laptop. I am plugging the monitor directly into the Surface Laptop, I have upgraded to a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and my Ethernet is going into the system over usb. Even with NOTHING else plugged into the Surface Dock.... nothing. Just power. It is STILL disconnecting and reconnecting intermittently. What the H?!?

This is unacceptable and you guys really need to figure out a solution for this. My boss has a Surface Book 1 and he also experiences these issues daily, as well. Since he's using dual monitors, he just puts up with them going out and turning back on five to twenty times a day. The only ones in the office with the dock that aren't experiencing these issues are the two that have Surface Pro 4's...

What can we do to fix this? The Surface Dock is currently the most expensive laptop charger I've ever purchased (since that's all it seems to be decent at). 

Sincerely, 

Microsoft Enthusiast

Surface | Accessories | Surface Dock

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-02-16T01:23:10+00:00

    Hope that works for you! For the majority of us in this thread, we don't have nvidia graphics in our machines... just the onboard intel ones.

    I wonder if manually offloading some of your intense CPU applications to the Intel GPU might yield a similar result. 

    YMMV, of course. In any event this is obviously not a one off issue with so many repros across a bevy of configurations. There is an obvious defect in the dock somewhere. 

    I ended up running the Surface Diagnostic Tool as well. That seemed to clean the other dock firmware services/watchers or whatever I was seeing in Device Manager, so that might be a good option as well. 

    Limitations exist with this tool as well.

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4037239/surface-fix-common-surface-problems-using-surface-diagnostic-toolkit

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-02-14T22:48:59+00:00

    Anecdotally, I observed that the dock 'crash & re-enumerate' action was primarily exposed under graphics load when using Chrome (and/or Edge Beta w/chromium base) for video streaming, audio streaming, sitting in the background with more than 2 tabs open, etc. 

    In a completely separate troubleshooting of portrait oriented monitors failing to have that option available, I updated the GeForce drivers directly from Nvidia's site and the Intel graphics from theirs, I then used the Control Panel configuration applet for the Nvidia GPU to separate GPU processing for the respective browsers between the Nvidia and Intel graphics cores. 

    I cannot and will not claim that this solves the dock crash issues. But I will also say that it hasn't repo'd for me yet. (~2 days, so not very long yet) 

    Hope that works for you! For the majority of us in this thread, we don't have nvidia graphics in our machines... just the onboard intel ones.

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-02-14T14:19:48+00:00

    Same issue here with a Surface Book. Constant USB device disconnects/reconnect. Monitors connected through the dock do not lose connection. I also see a flood of SurfaceDockFwUpdate events in the Application event logs that seem to correlate with the issue. The problem tends to happen most in the morning when I plug my surface into the dock for the day. By the afternoon the problem mostly seems to be gone.

    I do believe the problem is tied to the new updater program, but I can't figure out how to disable it to test my theory.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-02-14T07:19:22+00:00

    Anecdotally, I observed that the dock 'crash & re-enumerate' action was primarily exposed under graphics load when using Chrome (and/or Edge Beta w/chromium base) for video streaming, audio streaming, sitting in the background with more than 2 tabs open, etc. 

    In a completely separate troubleshooting of portrait oriented monitors failing to have that option available, I updated the GeForce drivers directly from Nvidia's site and the Intel graphics from theirs, I then used the Control Panel configuration applet for the Nvidia GPU to separate GPU processing for the respective browsers between the Nvidia and Intel graphics cores. 

    I cannot and will not claim that this solves the dock crash issues. But I will also say that it hasn't repo'd for me yet. (~2 days, so not very long yet)

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-02-13T20:56:40+00:00

    Same thing here, Surface Book 2 with Dock. Happens every few minutes to every half hour or so. Drives me crazy. 

    SB2 works totally fine by itself, just with Dock it disconnects and reconnects.

    Of course have latest drivers and ran the dock updater and troubleshooting tool. All OK it says.

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