Docking station won't STAY recognized - turns on and off

Discontinued Products UT-1
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My USB 2.0 Docking station won’t stay recognized. I plug it in and it “dings” like it recognizes a device in the USB port. It will work fine, until it “dings” again as if something were unplugged. It keeps recognizing and unrecognizing the device.

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Hi Kevin - Thanks for posting the question.

The first things to double check again when the whole device is having connectivity trouble are that the 1) USB cable between the dock and your computer is solid 2) docking station’s power adapter is plugged in to the wall and the dock. The dock and all its devices can’t run on USB power power alone. You’ve likely already done these, but good to check again.

A couple follow-up questions to figure out more about what’s happening:

  1. What operating system? Are there any messages from the operating system when the dock disconnects?
  2. Is the docking station connected directly to your laptop (or through another hub)?
  3. Has this been happening the entire time, or started suddenly at some point?

Thanks for following-up – we’ll figure out what’s happening here!

Best wishes,
Bernie

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I should have thought to provide that initially, sorry.

I have double checked your recommendations.

  1. WIndows 7 - and no messages come up. It “dings” the screen will flicker and start working. It will work for a little bit, “ding” again, screen flickers, and stops working. So on and so forth.
  2. It is connected directly to my laptop
  3. It has been happening the entire time.

I do have it connected to another monitor if that helps.

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Hi Kevin,

Focusing in on where in the chain of USB connections the problem is happening …

If you have another device around (for example, a USB keyboard or mouse), and have that plugged into one of the USB ports on the Plugable dock – Does that device appear/disappear as the USB-attached monitor does? Or does that device continue to work even once the screen flickers and goes dark?

This will help us isolate if the problem is at the dock hub level or graphics level – then we can figure out whether the cause is a hardware or driver problem.

Thanks for your answers and your patience while we work through this!
Bernie

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Yes I have a couple devices plugged into the dock (mouse, external hard drive, and monitor). They all function fine.

Just to clarify the screen basically “blinks” and comes right back on when it recognizes/unrecognizes the dock. When I plug the dock in, it has the recognition ding, the screen blinks, and everything (mouse, monitor, hard drive) work fine. Later it will ding as if it was unplugged, the screen will blink, and nothing will work. More often than not, once it unrecognizes the dock, it will ding several times, back and forth quite quickly, as if I were unplugging it and replugging it several times in a row.

So I don’t believe it’s anything graphics related. Everything functions fine, it just won’t stay recognized.

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Ah great - that helps to understand. OK - one more quick thing to try, then:

Have you or can you test without the external USB hard drive?

These often draw more than the USB specified 500mA, and want to exclude the possibility that an overcurrent from it could be causing all the USB devices on that hub to drop off.

If that doesn’t help, please email your Amazon order number to support@plugable.com. It definitely appears to be a hardware problem - and we will get you fixed up.

Thank you!
Bernie

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I actually just fixed it! I tried plugging it in a different outler on my surge protector and now it’s fine. I guess something was wrong with my surge protector. Thank you!

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Great! Glad that mystery is figured out!

That makes sense - the docking station requires AC power to show up on the USB bus at all. So as the bad surge protector outlet was causing power to waver to the dock, that on/off behavior is what we’d expect.

Thanks for sticking with it until the problem was found. Glad it wasn’t our hardware. :slight_smile:

Thanks!
Bernie

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Hi Bernie,
Bad news…it worked for a few hours but now it is right back to doing it again. I’ve tried everything I did last time, but it’s not working.

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Have you already tried bypassing that surge protector entirely?

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I’m seeing a similar issue with my new hub. I’ve got the following setup:

MacBook Air -> LED Cinema Display (3 port hub) -> Plugable 10-Port Hub

There is a USB HDD attached to (and powered by) the cinema display as well.

I haven’t seen any problems with devices connected directly to the cinema display, but connecting my Android phone to the Plugable hub, it sometimes goes into a repeated fast cycling on/off the bus.

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Hi Adam,

Thanks for posting - what you’re seeing is different than the previous issue on this thread, but let’s try to figure out what might be going wrong.

A couple questions:

* Do you see problems with any other devices connected through the 10 port hub, or is it only the Android device?
* Does the android device ever drop off the bus when the android device itself is off (charging), or is it only when it is on+charging?

If you like, you can email support@plugable.com to create a ticket and we can help you independent of this thread …

Thanks for contacting us!
Bernie