Surface Dock 2 Software

[Sherlene Holloman]

Itcould be a marginal situation where the power is not quite adequate on occasions. Perhaps with a later model dock you would not get these problems. Interestingly, MS recommend using the charger that came with the Surface book and not USB C. Frequently asked questions about USB-C - Microsoft Support And the surface dock Gen 1 cannot provide as much power as the Gen 2.

I have only 5 surface docks in use. Most of our employee base are using WD19 docks (Dells) using the USB-C connector. This is because we have a mix of Lenovo, Dell, and Surface devices. We standarized on USB - C docking stations and so far it has worked well.

The issue is not the dock, nor the Surface, nor Microsoft. The issue is going from mini DP to DVI. We have encountered this problem long before the Surfaces came out. Deal with a MAC and you will know. It took us 3 monitors to find one that would work on a Mac from lightning (mini dp) to DVI.

Our monitors that are HDMI or already DP work fine with the connections. All of our Viewsonic monitors that are DVI will not work with any Mini DP to DVI converter. Most of our Dell DVI monitors will work with the converters. At this point we are replacing the old monitors anyways, and are simply making sure we get ones with DP.

Was hoping for your help in seeing if others are also having a similar issue. I have a handful of users who are using the Surface Laptop 4 and 5 with a Surface Dock 2. Oddly, some are noticing that as of the past few weeks that when they have a number of Chrome tabs open (not confirmed), the screens will randomly switch or the browser will switch places on the screen. I have not seen it in person so I am only able to offer what I am being told.

System has the latest windows updates and firmware for the dock. I suspect a windows update change may have caused this but wanted to confirm this by asking others if they are also having the same issues.

Troubleshooting process: my first step would be to check the hardware. Are the cables connected properly? Are they fraying or old? Are the users moving them around, causing a quick disconnect/reconnect that ends up messing with the display settings?

Just to clarify, you mean some users are using two monitors with the laptop open (three screens) while others are just using one monitor with the laptop open (two screens)? Also, which screen are they typically moving to (the monitors or the laptop screen)?

They cannot recreate as this will happen randomly. All was working well for users until about 2 or 3 weeks ago. Again - this is happening for more than one user so to have them all start having issues at the same time and have cable issues, keyboard shortcut issues and or more user error problems seems to be highly suspect.

Yeah, it seems you could be on to something then in regards to a patch possibly causing it. If this problem is only happening with Chrome, I suppose you could try reinstalling Chrome to see if that resolves it. But, also check that there are no common variables that have changed (e.g., new group policies deployed recently, or even something silly like all impacted users relocating to a new desk in the office that makes it morely likely for cable issues).

Perhaps the additional screen (or the dock itself) is disconnecting thereby putting the computer back in single screen mode - everything that was on the extra screen will move to this single screen. Then if the additional screen, or dock, reconnects you get two screens again but the windows stay in the same place. I guess it could be conceivable that this might happen quick enough to make it look like the windows are jumping from one screen to another.

Opening your Surface Dock will likely void your warranty. You should take every precaution when tearing apart any consumer electronic device. Even though the Surface Dock operates at 15V, you should be careful to keep metal bits and tools away to not short out anything. If you are not familiar with the safety aspects of working with electronic projects, do not attempt this teardown. Ifixit has a good safety guide for electronic teardowns and repairs.

Another option is to not use the MS dock, and get a Universal US 3.0 based dock instead. There are some drawbacks to this approach but its the simplest way to restore docking. Start here for that: -book-2-core-i7-with-dual-triple-monitors/

I know this is an old post, but has anyone opened up the magnetic cable/connector? I have a surface book that cannot power dual 4K displays as the dock connector is too close to the displayport. I am wondering if I can shave the end down to allow access to the mini dp opening.

Hi Dan, do you know if the mDP and USB connector on the Suface still work if a Surface Dock is plugged in? Or are they just re-routed to the dock instead?

Really nice teardown btw, very informative!

Just found something awesome in the PCIe specifications. Take a look at that connector on the board. Its looks like an OCulink connector. That may answer the question of what interface Microsoft is using for Surface connect. That would be pretty sweet.

A little late to the post but I was looking to take apart my surface dock and try to add a switch to turn on and off the charging ability of it. I would like to keep the use of all of the extra ports but not have it constantly charging the battery. I currently have an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and a few other things with my surface book (w/ gpu) when I am home and hate to have to not use it because of the charging. I assume that there are multiple wires inside of the Surface Connect Cable, is there any way you could find out which one would be the power supply to the battery? Or if this is even possible? Thanks

Having a dock plugged in and using the device draining the Surface battery all the way down, and then charging later is very unlikely to extend the long-term battery life on these devices. I would advise against this approach and use the devices as the super smart engineers designed them.

The reason I want to disable the charging of the dock is to prevent overcharging and damage the battery. Yes I understand that there should be tech that keeps this from harming the batteries, being a mechanical engineer myself. However I am skeptical of leaving this plugged in all the time, I have seen way to many batteries cooked from overcharging. I have talked with Microsoft about leaving the book plugged into the charger and they warned me that leaving it plugged in for long periods of time would damage the life of the battery. Being as expensive as it is I do not want to take that chance. I love the dock it is very convienient for using a full desktop setup but I would love to disable the charging on it. Thank you for getting back to me, I will check out that other post and see if I can figure out how it relates to this surface dock. Thanks.

Hi everyone, I got a surface dock from ebay months ago and I tested it and it was working nice but now after using it one night it does not work anymore there is 15v coming from the supply so I am thinking is something inside. By looking the teardown I dont see a lot of fixable component. Any hint of what can this be? Could this be something with the firmware? It does not power the usb port either

Hi Danchar.

Thanks for the great teardown! Do you have any idea of the pin connections in the SurfaceConnect connector?

Is usb 2.0 routed in the connector as well as usb 3.0, or is the differential pairs from usb 3.0 somehow used when connecting a usb 2.0?

Might be a 1-wire protocol like the Dell Laptop power supplies. Newer Dell laptops only charge if they can make a 1-Wire connection with the power supply and get the expected read from a 1-Wire EEPROM in the charger. Bet you lunch that is what is going on. Buy a 1-Wire reader and see if a 1-wire discovery works on that pin.

BTW the docking station power supply was redesigned to provide a lot more power for the Surface Book devices as well as two DisplayPort interfaces and four USB3. The older design would not provide enough power.

Thanks for the great work. Only one issue that all your pictures show in page at their 100% size so only a small portion is actually visible in the page. I tried Edge, IE11, Chrome, all the same result.

And a question about the magnetic. What is it for?

As for the magnet, It looks like it is there to simply align the proprietary cable to the board. I expect future models will not have the cable glued in and will let you swap the cable out for different connections.

Since the 206-02-17 collection of surface pro 4 updates we have had problems with the external monitors sometime not working. The best fix at least for a few machines has been to power off the dock fo 30 seconds and then plug it back in, this is after reboots of the surface itself have made no difference.

Is there enough in the dock to warrant this? could the firmware updates cause an issue with the dock?

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