Plugable UGA-3000 on my i3 Surface Pro 3 causing monitor to frequently flicker on/off, basically going black randomly

I just purchased a Plugable UGA-3000 USB Video Adapter for my Surface Pro 3 with an Intel i3 processor. I am using the Surface Pro 3 Docking Station and I have two monitors, one using the mini display port on the docking station and the other using this new adapter. The monitor attached to the new adapter keeps flickering on and off, basically going black very frequently. I updated the Intel driver like I saw in other posts, but that did not resolve my issue. I did install a cheap usb video adapter and that works fine since it does not use the display link drivers. It’s also not the device since it works fine with other computers and monitors. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi Brian,

Thanks for posting. I’m sorry the adapter isn’t working properly on your Surface. I’d be happy to help.

There could be a few potential sources of the problem, but based on the fact the unit works on another system the first thing to look at is the other USB video adapter you installed. You can only have one type of USB video adapter driver installed on your system as the drivers for the different technologies (DisplayLink, MCT, SMSC) are not compatible with one another. The first step would be to disconnect the non-Plugable adapter and remove the driver associated with it. DisplayLink has put up a guide for doing so here –> http://displaylink.com/support/ticket…

Once the driver for the other product is un-installed the next step is to clean any version of the DisplayLink driver that is installed on the system an re-installing the latest version we recommend. Please follow these steps:

  1. Disconnect the Plugable adapter from the computer. Please keep it disconnected until the last step.

  2. Uninstall the DisplayLink Core software from the Control Panel -> Programs and Features. Don’t worry if this fails, just move onto the next step

  3. Download and run the DisplayLink cleaner tool, found here:
    http://displaylink.com/techsupport_fi…

  4. Once the Cleaner has been run, reboot (even if not prompted to)

  5. Now download and run the 7.7 M4 DisplayLink software, found here:
    http://displaylink.com/support/sla.ph…

  6. Reboot, even if not prompted to

  7. Once you’re back in Windows, reattach the adapter to your Surface which will trigger the final portion of the installation

Please let us know if that helps, and we can go from there.

Thank you,

Bob
Plugable Technologies
www.plugable.com/support

Thank you. The other adapter is not being used. I only installed it for testing. The current setup is only using the mini display port and the Plugable adapter.

Hi Brian,

Thanks for getting back. Just to be sure, you removed all of the software for the other non-Plugable adapter correct? Even if the other adapter is not connected if the driver for the other adapter is installed it can cause problems.

Did you have a chance to run through the driver cleaning process and DisplayLink driver re-install I mentioned earlier?

If you have removed all the other software and gone through the DisplayLink driver re-install and the issue remains, the next step would be to examine some logs from your system. Please download and run our Diagnostic utility PlugDebug –> http://plugable.com/support/plugdebug and email the file it creates to support@plugable.com with ‘Ticket 100251’ in the subject line so we can match everything up. Please have the UGA-3000 connected even if it is not working when you run the utility.

Once we have the file we can determine the next steps and go from there.

Thank you,

Bob

I did the driver cleanup and still had the issue. I was able to install the DisplayLink 7.8 beta and it appears to have greatly reduced the black screen issue and may even be resolved. I think it has only happened 2 or 3 times when I first installed the new driver yesterday afternoon, but it has rarely happened since. Before, it was happening all the time where working on that monitor was impossible. The only time it stayed “on” was when I wasn’t trying to use it. I hope when they release the final release of 7.8, it will resolve the issue entirely.

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the update. Unusual that the beta version of the driver was necessary to resolve the issue, but I’m glad it is working now.

Let us know if anything changes.

Thank you,

Bob