No video on multiple Lenovo USB 3.0 docks
 

Hello,

Please help me get to the bottom of this. I don't know if I have received many bad units or if there is a Displaylink software issue. My company has ordered over 200 of these units to use with HP Folios. We went with this product because of the dual output capability that is a requirement of many of our users. Some of these work fine but a lot of my techs have reported issues right out the box when trying to get these configured correctly. If the issues don’t happen right away, it will in a few days or so.
I spent the last few days testing the Lenovo docks on a Folio with Win7 64bit and an HP 8460 with Win7 64bit. The main two issues we are having on any system:

• Some Lenovo docks only display video from the 2.0 port
• Video does not work on 3.0 or 2.0 port
• Unable to update firmware on Folio

It is strange because some docks work on either port, 2.0 or 3.0. Some will work fine on 3.0 and then stop. My techs thought a couple units were bad but when I tried them on 2.0, they worked. I can tell when they don’t work without even hooking up monitors because the Displaylink Display Adapter (4302) and the ThinkPad USB 3.0 dock drivers do not load in Device Manager. For the ones that only want to work on 2.0, those drivers simply do not load on 3.0. BTW, never have issues with the keyboard or mouse not working. It is only video.
I have tried everything and I am out of options. I’ve updated the Displaylink drivers, the Fresco USB drivers for the Folio, the Renesas USB drivers on the 8460p, and both laptops have the latest Windows updates. I ran the Displaylink debugger tool for the multiple scenarios. Please tell me if this appears to be a software or hardware issue. Either way, if I can’t get this fixed these docks will need to be sent back. We have close to $30,000 invested in these docks and we are getting way too many complaints for a product this expensive. I am under the gun here and any help is appreciated. Even if you can give me a recommendation for a different dock…except for Targus as we tested that and had basically the same issues!

I think all the issues you are seeing are due to USB 3.0. There are fixes for USB 3.0 issues in the firmware in our chip, and in the host controllers.

I think the docks you have, have older firmware, which could have some USB issues. On first connect to a system running v7.0, the firmware will be updated to v7.0. However you need to have a successful connection to the host PC for this to happen. If it is being connected on USB 3.0, it may not connect properly, so the FW cannot be updated. A chicken and egg situation.

The way out of this is to have a machine with 7.0 installed, and connect each dock on USB 2.0 and make sure it is up and running with v7.0 software. This will mean that the FW in the dock has been updated. It should then be possible to deploy the docks to the users and they should work on USB 3.0 (as long as their HC software has also been updated).

Future docks will ship with later firmware, so this is only a problem for the first docks bought, which need to upgrade themselves in the field.

Hope that solves the issue.

Wim

Thanks Wim, we will give this a shot going forward. I want to confirm that we only need to install DisplayLink 7.0 on the laptop first and we don't need to install the Lenovo drivers from the CD or website? I did a quick test on a fresh laptop and it worked but I think the dock already had the firmware updated. Just want to make sure that all we need to do is install DisplayLink 7.0 on a fresh laptop and then plug in the dock.

Yep - 7.0 from our website should be all you need.

Wim