Brace yourselves as there's a lot to explain here but I am out of ideas and want to see if I missed anything before I tell my boss I need another dock.
I am using an SEDK1407 dock with a Lenovo ThinkBook 16 G8 IRL that has a Core 7 240H CPU. It has the following things connected:
The laptop can only pull 65W so it's well within spec for the dock's claimed power delivery.
Since I got this dock, I have had constant problems with some of all of those USB devices randomly disconnecting. Sometimes they'll do it once an hour, sometimes multiple times a minute. Monitors never drop, only USB, though USB Billboard Device is among the ones that show as disconnecting and reconnecting. It's incredibly disruptive and frustrating. If I plug in my laptop's power adapter into it while the dock is connected, the issue happens far less but still happens. This happens completely at random, though anecdotally seems to happen more when the laptop is under heavier load. It can just be sitting idle and do it too though. When the dock is disconnected, it behaves normally.
I've spent weeks trying to figure this out. Since we have a bunch of these docks in our office and my colleagues weren't having issues, I assumed the dock wasn't to blame. I've so far tried all of the following and nothing has helped:
And finally, I bought a USB-C power delivery test device. It appeared as though my laptop was pulling inconsistent amounts of power when it was plugged in and the variances indicated that could be the issue. I opened a support case with Lenovo and they agreed. I sent the laptop in and they claim they confirmed the problem and replaced my motherboard. This too, changed nothing.
As I said, this laptop, plus the stuff connected to the dock doesn't pull nearly enough power to max out the dock's power rating. But that said, before we got these docks, we had smaller ones, the kind that aren't powered by a wall adapter but just plug in to the laptop. Aside from that one only being capable of slow charging the laptop, I never had this problem with it.
The only thing I haven't tried yet is wiping and reloading Windows 11 but I don't see how this is software related. I've been in IT for 25 years and have a lot of experience telling me this isn't software. I can reload it if necessary but I really don't think it will help as it started as soon as this model dock was introduced.
I was hoping there was maybe a firmware update for this model but it doesn't appear so. I don't know if it's just not compatible with this model ThinkBook for some reason or if there's something else I can try but I am at my wit's end and can't properly work when my keyboard and mouse keep randomly cutting out. This has literally happened 4 times as I've been writing this post.
I just wanted to see if Selore or someone else here has run into this issue and might have a solution. If not, I'm going to ask my boss to order me a dock from a different brand to see what happens there. But I don't want to have to pitch him that unless I'm certain it's the only option.
Thanks.
