Dell Precision 7540 and WD19DC Network issues

@dahunt thanks for your contribution. Looking at your the issues you have described and the troubleshooting carried out, I believe the network drop out issues are the same as the others have been experiencing, however the video loss has never been mentioned.

It's also never been brought up with engineering either. From our extensive investigations into dock fault finding, we have found very few failures being related to the dock itself. It's been driver or configurations issues.

My suggestion here would be to work through the following troubleshooting guide, following the exact order for driver installation and then the troubleshooting steps for each fault.

https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln316828/how-to-use-and-troubleshoot-dell-docking-station-wd19?lang=en

If you are still having problems with video and power after that, please get back to me and I can look into this further.

we have the same issue.we have about 40 Precision 7540's and a lot of WD19DC dockings. We would like to urge Dell to prioritize this.

Go into your advanced power settings and under PCI Express change your  Link State Power Management settings to Off for both battery and plugged in states (you can probably just do plugged in as that's when the dock will be connected).

This is a workaround until Dell actually fixes the issue.

Just wanted to chime in "Me too!"

I have a single 7540 laptop with three WD19DC docks and I experience Ethernet drop on all of them. Single-cable connection issue comes up as well, but luckily rarely enough, so I remedy it by power cycling the dock. I tried the suggested PCI Express Link State Power Management setting (off), the Ethernet is holding up so far (2 days). Lets see if it solves the issue.

However, I also experience USB connection drop when I copy files from one dock-connected USB drive to another. It never happens when I connect both USB drives directly to laptop ports. Following the PCI Express example, I disabled USB Selective Suspend Setting under Advanced Power Management, but it did not solve the issue.

I was working with Dell Tech Support and was advised to replace the motherboard. Somehow I don't think it is the MB. It seems to be a systemic issue with WD19DC docks, considering the number of complaints on this Board.

I have the same problem with the docks, we have 7x Precision 7540 with WD19DC and i have the issue on every notebook that causes random connection lost on the docking. Our solution is to use the LAN on the device...

I hope there is a solution in progress...

Btw Dockchange and MB change is not the solution!

I'am really disappointed in Dell, because the issue is known now for quiet a while...

Kind regards

Same issue for me with this dock and 7740, power cycling the dock worked for me... But will the dock function next time i reconnect the laptop ?

Dell... Stop changing motherboards whenever theres an issue with your laptops.

Hi Jaysweden,

Thank you for reaching out to us. We will be glad to assist you with the concern. Kindly private message us the service tag of your system and serial number of dock so that we can review the details and assist you accordingly. 

Hi Guys,

Did you have any update on this issue?

I tried to Uninstalled the drivers and reinstalled .

Deleted the device manager entry and deleted the hidden realtek entry rebooted.

But it didn't resolve the issue.

Please  help on it. 

After a firmware update last week I am getting the issue with only one of the two lights on the USB-C dual connector lighting up. I've tried multiple reboots, flipping the cable around, etc. with no luck. The network settings stayed put this time around and I haven't had any trouble there, but the display drivers seem to be spotty since the firmware update.

Any update? Still having the descibed issues... even with a new Motherboard and 1.6.0 firmware.

I have the Thunderdock in the office and at home.  When I put my Precision 7540 to sleep in the office at the end of the day, and bring it home and open the laptop and turn it back on the wireless network adapter is disabled.  The laptop is asking me to turn it on manually via a switch outside the laptop.  The Precision 7540 doesn't have a switch on the outside of the laptop.  The only way to turn it back on is to dock to the Thunderbolt with the dual adapter and then take it back out again.

It seems the "switch" to turn the wireless adapter on and off is inside the Thunderbolt dual adapter connection.  Even when I take the dual adapter out in the office before I put the laptop to sleep it seems to not be on when I wake the computer when I get home. 

Is this issue related to the  issues others are experiencing with network connectivity issues using the thunderbolt docking station dual adapter?

Update: I am still having multiple issues with 4 out of 6 WD19DC's that we have. Sometimes they lose power to one of the cables, sometimes they lose network connectivity, and sometimes they just won't work at all. Cycling power and fiddling with it endlessly will get it working temporarily but it is only a matter of time before they fail again. I would NOT recommend anyone to buy this particular docking station because they are a nightmare to deal with. I see no end in sight and no dock drivers updates since last October. Big time fail on Dell's part on these. 

I posted solutions with this WD19DC dock to the other Dell forum threads. This issue is a bit different then the power issue and all of the related issues you have but I bet this is what will fix it for you (I hope)

"I had a bunch of 7540 laptops and the WD19DC docks for a few months and just started to deploy them as my inventory ran out. I had the same issue (limitations warning on boot due to USB C power) after I had deployed this to another branch office. I already update all drivers and BIOS before they leave me and what eventually fixed it was the dock firmware. 

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/dell-wd19dc-dock/drivers

download the firmware utility and do the updates. I had 2 of 4 updates in that utility that showed it was old. (first one on the list and the last one with the "ec") after this I rebooted the system remotely and it came back after a minute where I would usually have to tell the user to acknowledge the warning so I could see it on my side again.  

FYI I had BIOS 1.10.2 which said in the notes it was to fix the power issues etc. but that did not work. Make sure you have the latest BIOS and any Thunderbolt updates in Dell Command Update. "

any update? I'm still having the power issue on boot and only one lit usb from the wd19dc to the 7740 thunderbolt ports? Seem like Dell would be better on top of this. I've tried their tech support which seems so basic in their product knowledge and have wildly different ideas which do not work...hours of wasted time. Might as well buy an acer at 1/3 the cost!