Dell D6000 XPS 9300 Compatibility

Apologies! It seems a whole section has vanished!  Looks like I just lost it again saying an error has occured...lets try again!

The issues faced are as follows:

XPS 9300 with ONLY D6000 plugged in via USB-C results in flashing screen on the laptop and nothing on the two monitors.  Unsure if keyboard/mouse works as the laptop screen flashes too quickly to check.
The white led front of the 9300 also flashes indicating it is charging/not charging/charging/not charging etc.  I assume the flashing of screen is indicating the same flashing you get when you plug/unplug the charger.

XPS 9300 with D6000 plugged in one side AND charger plugged in results in normal/expected use.  Both monitors work, no flashing and keyboard/mouse works fine.

As for your firmware for D6000 - no this is something I have not yet checked directly from DisplayLink - Will do this shortly 

How much power would the dock take and would it have 45w worth left for the laptop?  The official charger I believe is 120w for the dock so I would be surprised if its using all the juice up

@aj84  Can you be more specific than "it no longer works"?  That doesn't really provide any real detail to let anyone who's willing to help you try to do so.  All XPS 13 models introduced over the last several years have been designed for a 45W power source.  The D6000 can provide up to 60W to attached systems.  Have you tried updating the D6000 firmware and installing the latest version of the required DisplayLink software directly from DisplayLink.com?

It seems that the XPS 13 9300 has some issues with certain powered Thunderbolt 3 devices at the moment (just do a quick search and people have had issues with TB3 monitors, docks and eGPUs). Suggest that you lodge a support request with Dell and hopefully this could be fixed with a firmware update. I guess it's a "good thing" that it happens on Dell's own dock as well -- probably this would give Dell some motivation to fix the issue?

@aj84  firmware for the D6000 comes from Dell, not DisplayLink.  The latest firmware as of this writing is here.

As I said above, the D6000 can provide up to 60W to attached systems (it uses a 130W adapter itself), so yes it would be able to provide 45W.  You can verify this by reading the D6000's manual available on support.dell.com if you like, or check your system's BIOS where it should somewhere show the wattage of the detected power source.  Note that on all Dell systems I've seen, when using a USB-C power source, the identified wattage will be either the maximum wattage of the source or the maximum wattage the system will actually draw from it, whichever is lower -- and since the XPS 13 only ever uses 45W, that's the figure you should see when attached to the D6000.

If the firmware update I linked doesn't resolve the issue, then based on your description this does sound like some sort of firmware bug.  These types of issues do seem to occur more frequently nowadays with newly released systems, I guess because engineers just figure they can always send a patch later rather than worrying about getting it right before launch.  So in that case all I can suggest would be keeping an eye out for future BIOS updates.

ok so no luck with latest drivers 

Firmware is also no go - it wants only USB-A which is impossible on the 9300 given it only has USB-C.  I tried with the adapter but it does not detect the dock using this.

One thing I did find however is when it's just dock, I get the constant flashing but if I have the 9300 on it's own power, then plug in the dock, and then remove the charger, it carries on working without any issues on both the external and laptop monitor.

There is no error per-se.  The screen it is essentially stuck on is basically stating I need to use USB-A and unplug everything plugged into the dock.

I'll try again tomorrow when I have more time otherwise I do have a precision 3620 but means moving a few bits round to get it closer.  Will report back tomorrow.

As for the query about power - I thought exactly that when I got back as I did not check so I will double-check this tomorrow too!

@aj84  What is the error message you're seeing when running the firmware update?  I haven't updated a D6000's firmware myself, but the D6000 just uses regular USB 3.x data, so it shouldn't care whether it's connected via USB-A or USB-C.  When it IS connected via USB-C, it can provide power to the attached system and use DisplayPort Alt Mode to support running a third attached display, neither of which is possible when connected via USB-A, but I can't imagine why either of those capabilities would prevent a firmware update from being performed while connected via USB-C.  And if you're using an adapter, then that would prevent both of those additional capabilities, and make that USB-C port act exactly like a regular USB-A port, so I definitely don't understand what's going on there.  Do you happen to have access to any other system that has a USB-A port?  You probably wouldn't even have to install the DisplayLink software if you just want to run the firmware update.

When you connect the system's own charger first, then connect the dock and remove the charger, have you verified that the XPS 13 continues to receive power from the D6000 rather than running on battery power?

I still think this might boil down to a firmware problem with the XPS 13 itself, especially given this additional issue of apparently not being able to update the D6000's firmware over USB-C -- although I realize that doesn't help you today.

I'm still curious about the error you're getting trying to update over USB-C though.

I do confirm that the issue is still present running latest FW.

FW version on D6000 Dock_D6000_FW_Updater_A03_T8Y8T.

XPS 9300 BIOS 1.0.7.

By chance, I was at my desk today with everything plugged in for the Dell rather than my surface or lattitude and could test it once again.

To my surprise, it works.  I have no changed anything at all and if anything, increased the setup by a third monitor so we have two 27" + 1 24" Dell acting as a vertical monitor.

They do flash a fair few times - more than my liking but after 10-15 seconds, everything settles down and all 3 + laptop screen work fine.

Battery is also charging and this is all without the Dell charger plugged in.

I do have one odd issue in that screen 1 (vertical) and screen 2 work first time only if screen 3 is off or pointing to another source.  Screen 3 is now in a HDMI switch so its easy to "switch it off" from the dock by pointing it to HDMI 2 on the switch.

Once I do that, and the 2 screens + laptop are fired up, I can switch the third back to HDMI 1, and that fires up too.

If I DONT do this, they all continuously flash on/off until I pull the cable out or flip the third to HDMI 2.

I think the whole Dell dock  + Thunderbolt/USB-c is very flaky which is a shame as it should just work especially given it is all Dell.

For now, it works - hopefully the flashes are not doing any harm to the laptop - monitors can be replaceable with minimal cost but the laptop is worth more than all 3 monitors together.  Luckily it has next day on-site warranty for 5 years as does the new Dell monitor 

Another update - there was a bios update recently and a bunch of other drivers.

I've been sitting away from the dock as the latitude has been plugged in but yesterday I plugged in the XPS and all 3 screens worked first time.  Still get the various flashing while the screens are detected via the dock but after a few flashes, everything works.  Tried it 3 times unplugging and replugging and it worked all 3 times using the right side usb-c port.

Hi also have an XPS9310 with a D6000, and it worked for sometime but now has stopped working. Symptoms are flashing screens and nothing working. I have another dell dock, this one a thunderbolt TB16, and that works fine now (after several bios updates to sort things out).

@killian.lobato  A few threads have been created or received new posts in the last week or so about D6000-related issues on a variety of systems.  I haven't been following them closely, but I do remember one user posting that they had traced this to an Intel Graphics driver update that had been pushed in the background either by Windows Update or Dell Update/SupportAssist.  Rolling back that driver update got the D6000 working properly again.  Based on the fact that this affects the D6000 dock that uses "indirect display" technology called DisplayLink (not to be confused with DisplayPort) but does not affect the TB16 that taps into native GPU outputs, there may be a compatibility issue between some new Intel Graphics driver and the DisplayLink driver required to send video to DisplayLink-based docks.

How do you Intel Graphics driver update roll back? what are the steps?

I think you are correct it worked fine with my D6000 on Friday then updates occurred and now on Monday flashing screens.

@TaskMasterRob  I may have misspoken earlier.  It may have been a Windows Update that broke this, not an Intel Graphics driver.  But to undo Intel Graphics drivers, I typically just completely uninstall the driver from Programs and Features and then install whatever version I want, which I'd download from a site like Dell Support.  For rolling back Windows Updates, that can be done from Windows Update itself.