Death Knell and the WD15

BIOS and drivers updated?

Does it happen to work better if you put the laptop in the airplane mode (disable the wireless card)?

Thank you for your response. In the past 8 months I've done everything I was supposed to do regarding this docking station. I've had Dell support weigh in heavily but to no avail. As mentioned, it's been a slow demise as one feature after the other has failed. As to disabling the wireless card, that would remove all internet which defeats 3/4 of my usage.

I did not mean to disable it permanently. Just for testing, and while at it you can also check Ethernet connection stability. Any it is really easy to check.

Many folks seem to blame the dock issues on some sort of interference with the wifi card. If the issues happen to go away with the card disabled, you should be able to convince Dell service to replace it with Intel 8260, which is claimed to work without issues (though it is a 2x2 not 3x3).  

Hope I didn't come across as snarky there. Obviously I know you didn't mean to shut it down - shut it all down. Ethernet stability is no issue as my other non-Dell WiFi devices have never struggled (and I already had that conversation with my service provider). I'm going to give the disable a run out of curiosity but I'm not crossing my fingers. Funny you mentioned the 8260 as I have one coming tomorrow. Not for this reason but because the XPS seems to lag and stumble from time to time so I thought I'd try the Intel card. Thanks again.

Anybody can go berserk with such a dock. I thought my old Lenovo dock had issues but this is a totally new dimension. I hear other manufacturers were having a busy year with their TB3 docks too.

I meant wired Ethernet stability, and to shoot down wifi and BT totally meanwhile. Here, wired Ethernet connection is stable now on the WD15, but not on a small Aukey hub where it reconnects once in a few minutes. Initially I haven't tested it on the WD15 but it was probably dropping like everything else save for the AC power.

I did not notice any problems with wifi stability as such. But many blame this wifi card of messing up the dock connection somehow (though it is on the other side in the 9550???). I've turned wifi power down to 75%, disabled BT interoperability, disabled wifi power saving (advice found online), and still the computers tends to freeze for a moment now and then while web browsing if i'm not in airplane mode when I'm on the dock. I've got the 8260 ordered too.

Disabled WiFi - no change. Manually rebooted power on the WD15 (while in airplane mode) and zombie, speaker/headphone ports back from the dead. Now... was it the airplane mode or the reboot (although I'd tried that trick before to get the USB ports to work)? My money's on the reboot. Sometimes we have to kick our stuff. So it's yes to monitor/speaker/headphone ports - no to everything USB. The Anker hub I'm using has worked quite well, It's just that I'd looked to retire it with the use of the docking station. Looking forward to see what happens with the 8260 installed, for both the WD15 and XPS. As to wired Ethernet, a desktop runs off the router and I've been fortunate to have had little issue.