I have the Plugable USB-C 4K docking station and my laptop is an HP Spectre x360 Convertible 13-ae0xx w/ 8th Gen I7 CPU running latest version of Windows 10. I have one HD monitor connected, as well as my wireless Microsoft keyboard and Logitech mouse, and Logitech surround sound 3.1 system. The docking station is connected to the laptop via USB-C port. I also have a microSD card permanently mounted in the laptop slot. All laptop drivers are up to date.
Everything works as expected with one exception.
Problem
If I plug the USB-C plug into the port with the laptop either awake or in Sleep mode with lid closed, and start using the laptop in desktop mode, after some time windows start popping open by themselves, popping sounds come out of the speakers, and the mouse is moving about on its own.
The cure for this is to reboot the machine (with the docking station connected) and there is no issue.
If I plug in the docking station with the laptop off and then boot up with the docking station already connected, there is no issue.
Now, after having stably used the docked laptop, I pull out the USB-C plug and leave, the laptop is not unstable when used disconnected - it works fine.
Questions:
Is this normal behaviour for this docking station?
Does the docking station not support hot swapping?
Hello, thank you for posting and I will be happy to help!
Thank you for the detailed description of the strange issue you are seeing, I cannot say that I have witnessed this before and it is not what I would expect when connecting the dock to a system when it is awake or when it is sleeping.
When windows begin opening automatically, are these applications that were already open and may be minimized in the task bar or are they applications that had been closed?
If you connect the dock with only the monitor connected does the same issue occur? I am curious if this behavior ceases if USB devices are not connected (specifically the wireless keyboard and mouse).
Thanks for the response and suggestion. I did try your suggestion (monitor only connected to the docking station) and it did not seem that there was a problem with that connection, but I needed to type using the keyboard so I tried the following.
I started by unplugging the powered USB hub that was attached to the docking station. That hub had the MS Keyboard plugged into it, as well as a USB powered laptop stand with fan. I plugged both of those into the docking station so the hub was not connected, and it was good for a day.
Then this evening he flakiness happened again. This time it was not a case of me plugging the USB-C cable into a sleeping laptop - the laptop was connected but sleeping. I had woken it up and was browsing when after some time, the instability occurred. So it seems to be related to waking up from sleep.
Only one closed application opened up and it was the usual one. It was a Dropbox popup window asking me if I wanted to import pictures or videos now. From where I have no idea because I had not plugged in a storage device meanwhile.
I then reattached the hub, since that has some memory card slots as well as other USB ports that enable occasional temporary use for other devices.
I will continue testing and hopefully by the process of elimination will narrow it down a bit.
Thanks for the detailed reply and isolation that you have done. Unfortunately an obvious thing to suggest is not coming to mind and we’d like to investigate some log files to see if anything can be learned after the issue occurs when waking from sleep.
To help us do so please download and run our diagnostic utility PlugDebug –> http://plugable.com/support/plugdebug just after the behavior has occurred and you have restarted so we can try and capture the behavior. Please send us the file that is created on your Dekstop by attaching it to an email to our direct email address at support@plugable.com with ‘Ticket Number 255439’ in the subject line. We’ll match everything up, examine the logs and determine next steps from there.
Hello Wayne, thanks for the reply and sending the PlugDebug to our support email address. In looking at the logs I do see some lower level communication entries in Device Manager that read “Unknown USB Device (Port Reset Failed)” and “Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed)”. These could be pointing to a hardware issue that may be causing some of this strange behavior.
Once variable that could be updated when cross referencing HP’s support site is that the Thunderbolt 3 drivers could be updated. I’d recommend disconnecting our dock, connecting the HP power supply and downloading and installing the Thunderbolt 3 drivers from HP here –> https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp87501-88000/sp87988.exe. It appears that the system’s BIOS and Intel graphics adapter drivers are already up to date.
If that doesn’t help we’d want to see if a replacement dock behaves in the same manner and we will reach out to your email directly in order to gather order and shipping information to facilitate the replacement process.