Dell docks suddenly not working with specific laptops?

[MrBrownPr]

We use Dell laptops at my school and have docks in all the classrooms to the teachers can "quickly and easily" dock/undock their laptops for connection to the Smartboards, visualisers, etc.

 

These docks are the absolute bane of my life and cause SO many problems!

 

On Friday one of the teachers told me at lunch that her Smartboard had stopped working and asked if I could take a look at the end of the day. She didn't need it for the afternoon but would for this week.

 

The docks usually have a blue power light illuminated but this wasn't showing. I checked the PSU and plug, everything was fine. I double-checked the power of the PSU and confirmed it was 130w. I swapped the dock for one in a spare classroom, still nothing. Finally I connected all the cables directly to the laptop and that worked perfectly. So it seems that there is an issue with this laptop and the connection to the dock.

 

However, I had already had a similar issue with another laptop (slightly different Dell model) in another classroom the previous week. I'd resorted to the same resolution there, i.e. all cables direct to the laptop and removing the dock. This morning (Monday) I've come in to find a third laptop in yet another classroom with the same symptoms.

 

This can't be a coincidence, can it? I'm thinking either a Windows update or a driver update has borked the connection between these laptops and docks.

 

Has anyone had (or having) a similar problem and can shed any light on a solution?

 

Thanks!

[Andycat]

No option to duplicate monitors on Windows 10 Anniversary and Creators Update ? DisplayLink Support

 

Not that is it? We're having some issues here.

[MrBrownPr]

Thanks, but I don't think so.

 

We're still on Windows 7 here as the drivers supplied by Dell/Intel for the graphics cards in the majority of our laptops in Windows 10 didn't support multiple displays.

 

I should probably also mention that it wasn't just a lack of display, none of the USB devices connected to the laptops via the dock were working either.

[3s-gtech]

Is the dock connector filled with half-eaten sandwich, fluff and what appears to be cat food?

[MrBrownPr]

Ha! That was my first thought!

 

No, they are clean. No bent pins either! (Awful design, but that's another thing...)

[mullet_man]

We are all Dell and have docks in our classrooms, have you checked the dock connector on the laptops?

 

We've got a mixture of E5520, E5530, E5550 and E5570s and I've found a small amount of laptops that have a slightly different dock connector most have what looks like a black bit of protective plastic running down the middle of the connector and others don't have this and you can see the pins are more exposed.

 

Anyway the moral of my story is laptops with this type of dock connector we've found that pins are more exposed and over time become misplaced and out of alignment and therefore won't work on the docks. I've had a bit of a battle with Dell over this issue.

 

Also check for any broken pins on the dock itself as we've had some heavy handed staff who have managed to damage the docks and this can cause all sorts of issues including really serious ones such as blown motherboards we had one dock that had broken pins which was being used for a while before it was caught and had caused the motherboards to stop recognising the batteries.

[mullet_man]

Sometimes the docks look fine but broken pins can be hard to spot

[MatthewL]

If you are logged in as local admin does it "install" as such as in the past it would recognise the dock, its not just having a moment as a user?