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Dell Latitude 5490 - McAfee FDE - Dell D6000 Dock
Good Afternoon,
Hoping that someone can really give me a hand here. So I recently purchased a Dell Latitude 5490 and a D6000 Docking Station, this is great pretty much works as expected when the machine is on however I am really struggling with the docking station using the display ports at the boot sequence.
We use McAfee full disk encryption which applied a pre-boot area that has to be authenticated to, the user can use their normal keyboard and mouse however they have to open up the lid of the laptop and type it in that way because the display ports do not show anything on the screen until you are at windows loading screen, they do not show any of the POST info nor the McAfee screen, tried searching for ages and cannot figure it out at all.
Tried updating the firmware of both my laptop and dock, no effect, changed some settings on the EUFI. I have even checked the USB-C connecter is being used but still nothing.
Surely there must be a way for the docks to display from the moment it powers on? Its just a pain having to open and close the lids, just moved away from Lenovo docking stations which requires a physical link so never had this issue before as the laptops are positioned away from the user to maximise space.
Would appreciate you helping me out or advising which setting I need to change to get this going.
Many Thanks
Dev.
jphughan
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December 4th, 2018 09:00
You won't get it to work with the D6000 because of the way it receives video from the system. Most docking stations receive video by tapping into native GPU outputs on the system, and therefore allow video to be displayed on external displays when the laptop lid is closed. The D6000 uses DisplayLink technology, which requires a driver to be running in the host OS because the displays are NOT driven directly by the GPU. I went into more detail about this design and its many drawbacks in this post. If pre-boot video is a requirement and you don't need to use these docks with systems that do NOT have USB-C connectors, look into the WD15 dock instead. Or if your 5490s are equipped with the Thunderbolt 3 option, you could alternatively use the TB16. The main difference is that the TB16 can handle higher-end display setups. The WD15 is limited to dual 1080p displays or a single 1600p display.
DevonOC
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December 4th, 2018 09:00
Well frankly that **bleep** but I am glad that we have only ordered a handful of these D6000 docks.
Really appreciate the feedback and quick response, ill take a look at your post. The 5490s have USB-C connector types but do not know if they are Thunderbolt 3 enabled, would you know how I check on this please?
Obviously the TB16 would be preferable if the laptop can handle it of course.
DevonOC
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December 4th, 2018 09:00
Or are there any other docking stations for the laptop other than the WD15 ? I only ask because of the graphical issues.
jphughan
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December 4th, 2018 10:00
There are a few ways to check for Thunderbolt 3. One would be the actual build list from when the laptop was ordered, but you can also go into the BIOS and check the Thunderbolt Configuration section. If you can configure options there, then you have it. If all options in that section are grayed out (or you don't have that section at all), then you don't.
In terms of other dock options, the only official Dell options for that system are the D6000, WD15, and TB16. However, USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 are both industry standards, so there are USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 docks available from third parties such as Plugable, Belkin, and StarTech, to name a few -- but there are things to watch out for when shopping. For example, the supported display configurations can vary significantly, especially with Thunderbolt 3 docks. The TB16 can support dual 4K displays, and many Thunderbolt 3 docks seem not to, even though the bandwidth is available, possibly because not all systems have the necessary dual GPU outputs wired to their TB3 ports to achieve that, so the dock manufacturer decided not to bother? Docks also vary in the amount of power they provide to the system for charging, if any at all. Some docks don't provide power, and others provide usually 60-87W. I believe the 5490 uses a 60W AC adapter, so if you want to charge it from a dock, make sure it provides at least that much power. The WD15 and TB16 can provide up to 130W to Dell systems when the docks themselves are ordered with the higher-wattage option of the two AC adapters available for them, but if you'll only be using 5490s, that isn't relevant. Lastly, if you want to utilize MAC Address Passthrough, you'll need to use Dell docks. Basically, that allows the Dell system to "override" the dock Ethernet connection's normal MAC address and replace it with the MAC address of the system's own Ethernet interface while that system is connected. Some companies require this capability in order to facilitate things like DHCP reservations, PXE booting, some image deployment scenarios, asset tracking, etc. Otherwise, a system would appear differently on the network depending on whether the Ethernet cable was plugged directly into the system's Ethernet port or the system was docked, and it would have a different MAC address when connected to each different dock.