Precision 3630 Keyboard Pauses and Character Repeats

We have a couple of dozen Precision 3630 machines that have intermittent keyboard freezes and repeating characters.  It only occurs with a physical keyboard, but it does not seem to matter so far which wired keyboard is being used with 3 different Dell models tried.  It happens on both the out of the box Dell image and our custom Windows 10 image of 1809 built using the Dell build guide.  All drivers/firmware/BIOS are up to date.

https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln314148/precision-3630-tower-workstation-windows-10-driver-install-order?lang=en

We finally have a case open with Dell support and they could immediately reproduce the issue in their engineering group.  We are waiting on a fix but no ETA thus far.  It happens from as little as once or twice per day to as often as every 5 minutes or so depending on how much keyboard activity is present.

It does not happen when remotely controlling the system with RDP or a third party tool like Dameware MRC, only when using a physical keyboard.  We have not seen it in BIOS mode though that testing was very limited in duration.

This Precision 3630 system uses a single USB 3.x bus interface to control all of the USB devices and it seems to be a part of the Intel C246 Chipset and the mouse/keyboard is about the only active device on the USB 3.x root hub.  (all Intel/Microsoft drivers as far as we can tell)

I have searched Dell and non-Dell sites but have found no other mention of this problem so I am documenting it here so others might benefit.

There are similar problems symptom-wise with both the 7730 TB16/TB18 Thunderbolt Docks pairings and the XPS-13.  The XPS-13 currently needs a new BIOS to fix the issue.  It is not clear whether there is a 100% fix yet for the TB docks.  Dell just released another BIOS and set of driver updates today (2019-03-07) and several more updates have hit earlier this week for the 7730 family.

XPS-13 Issue

https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln297563/xps-13-9343-unwanted-keyboard-character-repeat?lang=en

Various Thunderbolt Dock Issues

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2165595-thunderbolt-docks-not-ready-for-prime-time

Most recent Thunderbolt dock solution

https://www.dell.com/community/Precision-Mobile-Workstations/TB18DC-Driver-Update-Not-Easy-to-Find-so-here-it-is/m-p/6210686#M884

In any case if anyone else has seen the problem save yourself hours of frustration and just see if the as-delivered Dell OS image has the issue.  We followed their instructions for building a duplicate OS carefully but they would not offer anything except "You need to rebuild your OS image to fix your problem so until then I cannot help you." or "The problem is your OS image, and you need to fix that.". 

We already had spent many hours troubleshooting and eliminating everything else before we ever called, but they were not convinced or helpful in anyway whatsoever.  Even though we explained all the steps and painstakingly detailed how we had taken them in following their OS installation guides and setup recommendations.  Same answer.

Once we proved to them that the as-delivered image also had the issue only then they would pass it along for further support. These Dell systems and their images were delivered last fall around the end of November so this is not only a recent issue.  We can assume there is a BIOS fix and/or driver update needed, but we have very little to go on otherwise.

In any case we do hope a fix is ready soon, but at least if you see this you will know you are not alone and please comment here as well.

Good Luck and have a Great Day!