WD19DC dock impressions

For some reason on the Precision 7540 and the 7740 using this dock, the Generic SuperSpeed USB hub that the Realtek Ethernet adapter is attached to will quit working and show up as an Unknown USB Device. This doesn't happen on the Precision 7530 or 7730 attached to the same docks. The 7540 and 7740 both have the latest drivers from Dell and the latest drivers from Windows Update. Has anyone else run into this?

 

I can tell you that I've never experienced this on the 7530, but I don't have any 7X40 systems to test with.

The dock has been stable so far. The biggest problem I have is that whenever I undock and redock, one of my two 4K displays goes to YCbCr422 color mode and I have to manually flip it back to RGB in the NVIDIA control panel.

 

I have a 7540. Mine Ethernet not show revert to "Unknown USB Device", but I do end up with "No internet access" after some time.

I also have other issues with the dual connectors. When I boot up, it tells me that I do not have a large enough power adaptor. If I plug just the left plug in, then everything connects fine except for low power deliver. If I connect just the right plug, then USB ports do not work right. If I plug them both in at the same time, I get only the right or the left lit up. If the left lights up then everything works (except that the Ethernet goes out after some time). If the right plug lights up, then the USB ports do not work.

One notable thing is that I cannot install the latest Intel Chipset drivers. They seem to install just fine, but when I run "Detect Drivers" it still tells me that I need to upgrade.

 

There was an 1OCT19 dock USB host driver update for the XPS7590. Maybe there is also an update for your Precision 7540 that will resolve the problem?

It does state it's targeted at the TB16, w.r.t. the USB host exits at login.

 

Now a BIOS update for the XPS 7590 promises better stability for Realtek USB UEFI LAN driver. I don't know if the Precision setups have the update already.

Code:

- Updated the Realtek USB LAN UEFI driver version from 2.013 to 2.026 to improve the stability of connection.

 

I ended up giving up on 2x 4K 60 Hz monitors going through the dock. Issues are:
* Whenever I undock and then redock, one of the monitors goes to YCbCr color mode (giving bad font edges in "dark mode" and a yellow-ish tint to the whole screen) and I have to manually correct it in the NVIDIA control panel.
* This configuration requires Optimus OFF and I've had consistent stability issues with this system running with the NVIDIA GPU alone. (BSOD once every few days, NVIDIA driver to blame.)

So, I turned Optimus on. I'm running one display off of the dock and one off of the mini-DP port on the back of the system. I have to connect two cables instead of one, oh well, but everything has been working good and stable for about two weeks.

In this mode, I do have to make sure that the "primary" display is set to one driven by the Intel GPU, otherwise I get periodic stuttering if I try to watch a video (no matter which display the video is running on).

 

Thanks for the update. Disappointing how the dock technique "improves" after abandoning the e-port. Especially as those docks are not cheap. If I need to attach one display to the laptop anyways, I might go with a simple USB port replicator next time for mouse, keyboard, external HDD (maybe network) and live with both external displays directly connected to the laptop.

Have you asked Dell support to investigate those problems?

Would be interesting if they can repro and come up with fixes for their current dock, or if one has to wait for the next dock generation or if they give up on some high bandwidth configs like 2x 4K 60hz.

 

A bit of me likes Dells almost pure USB-C setup, a bit of me thinks they should have went with Lenovo's USB-C + charger cable setup (did HP also do this?). I suppose one could make an ersatz version of that, lol.

I'm still fine with my XPS 15 7590, single 1080p display, single 1280x1024 display "workstation," though I only need a single cable to run everything, so my experience doesn't really apply.

 

No, I didn't engage Dell support on this one like I did with the TB18DC dock. Since I have a configuration that works for me, I don't really want to have to swap back and forth for testing. Too busy to worry about it...
Overall I am more satisfied than I was with the TB18DC dock, even though I have to plug in a second cable, because the thing otherwise seems to be quite solid.

 

When you use your WD19xx dock, does the laptop occasionally emit the "Windows: Device Disconnected" sound? I have not been able to find what is triggering that in the event viewer. This happened with the XPS15, and it's happening with two different Thinkpads, too.