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
    2021-05-15T06:22:23+00:00

    Surface Book 2 user here. It seems it isn't just a Surface Dock issue. I have had 2 other dongles purchased off Amazon, USB-C and USB-A to ethernet (with additional other types of ports and etc though) and they both disconnect and reconnect continuously, anywhere between 15 seconds to a minute each time, sometimes even after 5 seconds of reconnecting. I thought my USB-C dongle had gone bad so I tossed it in the garbage and purchased a USB-A one. Turns out it wasn't my dongle and I threw away a $50 dongle for no reason. Different ports, different dongles, different networks...it just keeps disconnecting.

    I have just purchased a singular USB-A to ethernet (with nothing else on it) to see if the problem persists but haven't gotten to test it yet. I have a regular 4-port USB hub currently connected and it doesn't disconnect. I use another dongle in my office with dual USB, dual 4k HDMI, thunderbolt, and USB-C PD and that doesn't disconnect either. It seems to me the ethernet portion of these hubs/dongles/docks are causing these annoying, constant disconnects.

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-05-20T16:16:18+00:00

    I really think this has to do with heavy usage, primarily heavy video. I've noticed that if I'm running my security camera program and receiving the max resolution from the cameras my system will experience this issue over and over again. However if I change my camera program to receive low resolution the problem goes away.

    Another way to tell it's based off heavy usage, is if I have photoshop open with other programs it will start doing it.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-05-30T07:13:54+00:00

    its not due to heavy use, i have a surface pro 6 and am using a dock 2 and just having Firefox on my second screen causes this issue. nothing else. having anything appear on my second screen can cause this issue, if i don't have anything on the second screen the issue doesn't happen but then it makes having the dock as a video port pointless.

    oh and side note, after it does reconnect. the brightness and contrast settings on my second monitor get all f*&*#% up so i have to go and fix it in my settings every time.

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-06-28T11:14:06+00:00

    This whole Surface Book 2 experience has been crapola (other words get **** treatment 8^) ).  The detach requires you to manually hunt for apps to shut down in task manager which is all apps that you set to use 6GB card.  Since you can't set Win video processes to use 6GB vid, it's pretty much useless anyhow.  This docking station is the very worst part.  Every minute or two it drops audio, and USB drives, but mercifully not video, for 20-30 secs.  Now the dang front screen of the SB2 is peeling off the unit and they want $650 to address the obvious defect.  Looks like in this 1.5 year old thread, they have no advice at all to fix the dock problems.  Microsoft is just such an overpriced joke these days.  Should have bought an HP Spectre x360 for 1/2 the price and w/ Thunderbolt for 3X4K@60Hz.

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