8.2 Mixed Results with Computer Crashes

jeremy · 04-14-2017, 11:01 PM

Hello,

My company has had Dell's D1000 docks for ~3-4 months and have experienced issues related primarily to user-mode driver crashes. We've tried dock driver versions ranging from 7.9 to 8.1, but ultimately they all ended with the same result. Installing 8.2 has had positive results for my group of alpha testers, but I have had several come forward with issues that I don't believe to be related to the user-mode driver crashes because of a total lack of event viewer logs. We typically see driver framework critical errors, but not in these cases. Here's my environment:

Windows 10 version 1607 build 14393
Office 2016 version 1611-1702
Dell E5270/E5570 (12 and 15 inch) laptops
Dell D1000 docks
Two 1920x1080 Dell monitors connected with one Display Port and one VGA/HDMI-to-DVI
Mouse/keyboard/headset

These deployments are 3-4 months old and geographically spread out across the United States.

Our users operate similarly to a call center, with Skype for Business as our telephony solution. We access custom company apps through RDS. Other commonly used apps are Outlook, IE, Edge, Chrome, and Spotify.

Here's a description of the issues:
1. The users state that they are unable to click between Outlook and Skype for Business. This issue is not persistent, but rather intermittent. It seems that giving the laptop a graphics refresh, such as unplugging/replugging the dock, will give them the screens back. The windows are transparent and occupy a section of the screen, but the content of the windows simply do not show. The screens are not frozen and the dock has not crashed. I'm wondering if this may be some form of screen redraw.
2. The computer crashes. The screens retain a frozen image of the images that were last on them. When the user opens the laptop, the screen is entirely black. The user must hold down the power button to force the computer to turn off.Upon reboot, everything reconnects. This has been reported by several users, but I cannot replicate. The hardware appears to be good after diagnostics and switching out to different docks/cables, but the issue persists.

In both cases, I do not see any errors in the event logs and I have been unsuccessful in replicating this issue. We've been actively trying to squeeze as much performance as we can out of these laptops and it seems to be helping since we first rolled the laptops out, but these two issues seem to be prevalent among my users. We've also tried updating Office, but to no avail. The one thing we have not yet done is update Windows, but I'm not aware of any update that would help with this issue. If there is one out there, I'm willing to try it.
I also wanted to make a note that we seem to see more issues related to the Dell Giga Ethernet part of the driver. Is there any kind of known issues with that driver, or any performance enhancements we could do?

Please let me know if there's anything I can provide or any further steps I can do.

Thanks!

04-14-2017, 11:01 PM	#1
jeremy Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2017 Posts: 9	8.2 Mixed Results with Computer Crashes Hello, My company has had Dell's D1000 docks for ~3-4 months and have experienced issues related primarily to user-mode driver crashes. We've tried dock driver versions ranging from 7.9 to 8.1, but ultimately they all ended with the same result. Installing 8.2 has had positive results for my group of alpha testers, but I have had several come forward with issues that I don't believe to be related to the user-mode driver crashes because of a total lack of event viewer logs. We typically see driver framework critical errors, but not in these cases. Here's my environment: Windows 10 version 1607 build 14393 Office 2016 version 1611-1702 Dell E5270/E5570 (12 and 15 inch) laptops Dell D1000 docks Two 1920x1080 Dell monitors connected with one Display Port and one VGA/HDMI-to-DVI Mouse/keyboard/headset These deployments are 3-4 months old and geographically spread out across the United States. Our users operate similarly to a call center, with Skype for Business as our telephony solution. We access custom company apps through RDS. Other commonly used apps are Outlook, IE, Edge, Chrome, and Spotify. Here's a description of the issues: 1. The users state that they are unable to click between Outlook and Skype for Business. This issue is not persistent, but rather intermittent. It seems that giving the laptop a graphics refresh, such as unplugging/replugging the dock, will give them the screens back. The windows are transparent and occupy a section of the screen, but the content of the windows simply do not show. The screens are not frozen and the dock has not crashed. I'm wondering if this may be some form of screen redraw. 2. The computer crashes. The screens retain a frozen image of the images that were last on them. When the user opens the laptop, the screen is entirely black. The user must hold down the power button to force the computer to turn off.Upon reboot, everything reconnects. This has been reported by several users, but I cannot replicate. The hardware appears to be good after diagnostics and switching out to different docks/cables, but the issue persists. In both cases, I do not see any errors in the event logs and I have been unsuccessful in replicating this issue. We've been actively trying to squeeze as much performance as we can out of these laptops and it seems to be helping since we first rolled the laptops out, but these two issues seem to be prevalent among my users. We've also tried updating Office, but to no avail. The one thing we have not yet done is update Windows, but I'm not aware of any update that would help with this issue. If there is one out there, I'm willing to try it. I also wanted to make a note that we seem to see more issues related to the Dell Giga Ethernet part of the driver. Is there any kind of known issues with that driver, or any performance enhancements we could do? Please let me know if there's anything I can provide or any further steps I can do. Thanks!