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
    2022-11-13T00:24:33+00:00

    With mine the issues always happened when the device was under heavy load (which didn't take much):

    • Dock randomly disconnected (not fun on a video call where it causes all the windows to forget their places)
    • WiFi would also randomly drop
    • Device throttled itself so much it was barely usable
    • Device was so hot it was almost too hot to touch
    • Fans were really loud

    The only thing that helped was blowing a fan against the back of the case which helped the device stay cool and not malfunction and also stay quieter.

    I never did find another solution and the same issues occurred for me over a few generations with Surface Pro 7 being the last and worst.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-11-13T17:04:04+00:00

    Thanks Rob. You'd think MS wou;d be capabl;e of designing things better. I've been pretty disappointed with Surface all told, and would not recommend it to anyone.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-02-08T16:48:51+00:00

    I think I discovered something about this issue by chance yesterday. Here's the order of events:

    1. Came into work and plugged Surface Dock into Surface Book 2. Laptop was not charging. USB still worked though. (Great, another dock issue to troubleshoot)
    2. Cleaned Surface connector and port with alcohol wipe. Still not charging.
    3. Ran Furmark CPU stress test for hours. monitor temps with HWInfo.
    4. Plugged power supply from a Lenovo laptop into the USB-C port and Surface started charging again.
    5. Disconnected USB-C power, and the Dock was still charging. Strange.
    6. Ran Furmark CPU stress test again, almost immediately, USB peripherals on dock started disconnecting.

    After trying the CPU stress test multiple times, I figured out that there's a range of temperatures where the USB peripherals connect and disconnect over and over again. Above a certain temperature, USB won't work at all and there is no disconnecting and reconnecting; USB just doesn't work. Below a certain temperature, USB works as expected.

    From my experimenting, it seems to me it's clearly an overheating issue and somehow tied to the charging from the dock. I have USB selective suspend setting disabled. Surface Book 2 running Windows 10 and Surface Dock 2 on firmware 18.2830.368.0 DP 18.2165.368.0

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-02-08T17:00:51+00:00

    With me it always happens after Patch Tuesday reboots.

    Having said that Photos has a bug that pushes the CPU to over 25% and causes the unit to heat up - not only does it push the CPU up, it holds it even after the app is closed. Have gone back to Windows Photo Viewer now and no overheating since then.

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-02-12T21:55:45+00:00

    Yes it was definitely a stress issue for me too.

    The device became hot enough to cook my breakfast, the dock and devices would randomly disconnect at this point and also even the WiFi signal was affected due to the antenna getting very hot under the touchscreen (had to use a WiFi dongle). By this point just using it was a struggle due to it throttling the CPU to remain cool and the loud fan sounds were picked up by people on video calls.

    When the CPU becomes taxed and hot, that is when things start to become unreliable. All the undocking and docking also stresses it more whilst applications jump between screens. Over time the intense heat can then also cause the battery to swell.

    Very compact devices can exhibit some of these issues to some extent but I have never experienced anything even close to this severe.

    Hopefully the newer devices are better now.

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