Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
5 Posts
0
229367
Dell XPS 15 (9550) Screen Flickers and Blacks Out When Connected to DisplayLink Dock with External Monitors
We've been having screen issues when using a DisplayLink dock (specifically a Targus dock [ACP71USZ]).
There are two external monitors connected to it (making it 3x screens total).
When connected the first time, all three screens work. But after a few minutes sometimes an hour, all three screens flicker and only the two external monitors work. When going to display settings, we only see the two external monitors. The laptop screen is not detected. When clicking detect, all three screens work again before flickering and returning to two external monitors only. When looking in the intel graphics GUI, nothing shows (until i repeat the process and press detect in display settings).
We tried installing to the latest intel drivers with no luck.
I ran the dell diagnostic tools multiple times (the preboot one and the desktop one) and saw no issues.
The older XPS 15 (9530) never has an issue.
johnptd
380 Posts
0
February 23rd, 2016 23:00
I am a little confused about the dock you mentioned. The specs for it say that it has 1 HDMI, 1 VGA, and 2 DVI ports, no DisplayLink.
JohnD
skchan2
5 Posts
0
February 24th, 2016 06:00
DisplayLink is the software that all the docks with external monitor use (I think you might be thinking about DisplayPort, which is the actual plug type)
johnptd
380 Posts
0
February 25th, 2016 01:00
Sorry about that. The only thing I can say is that it is a XPS 9550 driver or BIOS issue. Did your older XPS 15 have Windows 10 installed on it? If you notice by the number of posts here regarding the Dell TB15 dock, there are a number of issues with it that are most likely driver or BIOS related. The Intel graphics as well as the NVIDIA graphics drivers have been in question. I would not be surprised by adding another driver on top of those might cause issues.
JohnD
skchan2
5 Posts
0
February 25th, 2016 07:00
Thanks,
I updated the BIOS and it seems to have fixed it. Although the first couple times after the update, the screen still flickered and I had to force detect within display settings to get the laptop screen back on.
My older XPS is on win 10 with no issues.
srshaw
19 Posts
0
February 27th, 2016 16:00
I'll have to see if the latest bios fixes it. I REALLY hope so since this has been happening since I got the xps 9550 laptop and upgraded to windows 10 pro. The screen goes into fits of flickering black and then back on (i'm lucky it hasn't induced an epileptic seizure). Sometime the screen goes black and doesn't come back until I put the laptop to sleep and then wake it back up. The forums over at notebook review list it as a known issue related to Hyper-v (http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/dell-xps-15-9550-list-of-hardware-and-software-problems.784691/#post-10147310
srshaw
19 Posts
0
February 29th, 2016 20:00
Unfortunately updating to the latest bios and drivers didn't fix it. Any other suggestions (or a response from official support technician) would be GREATLY appreciated. The machine is practically unusable like this and is extremely frustrating. Going to have to give this POS 1 star until they get around to resolving this issue that apparently everyone knows about but dell.
-Stephen
awasen
7 Posts
0
March 10th, 2016 03:00
I have the exact same issue on my XPS 9550. Dell support has asked me to update BIOS and Intel HD Graphics 530.
Currently I am on version 20.19.15.4331 of the Intel drivers and 10.18.13.6200 of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M.
I have only one screen attached using HDMI (high quality cable).
What happens for me is that the external screen goes black while the laptop screen remains on. After a second the external screen turns back on again. This can then repeat a number of times. Sometimes it only happens once but most often between five and ten times. At some point it just didn't stop so I had to restart the whole computer.
I have tested on three different monitors and it is only monitors in high resolution doing this. The one monitor which is max. 1366x768 I do not see the on/off behaviour only on my 4K screens (3840x2160).
One of my monitors has a "log" view and from that I can see that it is the signal that just disappears so the monitor thinks the HDMI source was turned off.
For me it is most often visible after I start working in the mornings, after waking the laptop from sleep, then the screen can go off/on a few times but then runs fine for several hours. I would say that for me it is mostly happening after the computer has been dormant and the external monitor has been turned off by power settings.
kaizenkai
1 Message
0
July 5th, 2016 16:00
I have the exact same issue as Awasen. It happens with my 4k monitor connected. Whenever I lock my computer and return it to it, the screens are off and when I push a button to wake it, the screens will flicker as though it is detecting the connected monitor. It will then either succeed or it will go into an endless flicker cycle before finally stopping with a blank screen forcing me to reboot.
Also, if it does manage to succeed, sometimes it will have to remount the screen connected display, forcing all my windows back onto the laptop display so I have rearrange everything. I've updated every driver and thus far nothing has worked.
Quite frustrating and becoming a burden to work with.