XPS 15 9575, Thunderbolt port doesn’t function

Hard to say but have you updated all drivers on the system, such as chipset, USB, Thunderbolt driver/firmware?

The other port on that same side is also Thunderbolt... if it makes any difference.  But since the original situation was the external drive was not behaving I might suspect something with it.

I updated everything that there is to update, also the hard drive is not a problem at all... The problem is with the port and the one underneath it works but that doesn't mean I shouldn't care for the top one... I mean it supposed to work... 

I'd like to know if there is a way to downgrade the "Intel Thunderbolt Controller Driver" because i've tried installing the lower version and it says that a newer version is installed and theres no way to bypass that..

Thanks.

I am not sure what the Thunderbolt driver is involved in your situation.  You are using the Power charging port (USB C) for the 9575.   Does it make any difference if the system is running on Battery?

I suppose you could disable the Thunderbolt in the Bios for testing?

I’m not using the charging port, that’s on the left side. I’m using the port on the right side which is the thunderbolt one on the right. It worked before updating many drivers through “Dell Update” application on my XPS and I can’t figure out what’s causing this problem now, so maybe that Thunderbolt driver is the one causing the problem?

The way I read your manual is the two USB c ports on the right side are not Thunderbolt ports.  The two ports on the left are thunderbolt ports. 

When you say the port under the other one, I get a little confused.  Of course, left and right refer to which side as you face the computer...

Maybe I am misreading something or your system is not like the one shown on the download page for the Setup.

Now I see it too, thank you. So what can I do about this then if it doesn’t have to do with Thunderbolt? What did go wrong and how did it somehow stop reading? I don’t understand what could cause it to connect and disconnect constantly. So as I read the manual these “power delivery” usb 3.1 ports are meant to work with external storage devices.

I’ll check the bios again, but the port on the bottom right does work with the hard drive and it’s the same connection as the top one so I think it’s supposed to function using both ports.

About the device manager, how do I know which device is responsible for those ports in there?

Thank for the help if you have any more ideas I’ll be happy to hear them.

It looks like your drive was designed to work with just the normal USB ports.  It may depend on the size of the drive as to how much power it takes which could be involved.

Also, if it is not stable, there could be a connection problem with that port.  Make sure and give the port a visual inspection in case something is loose or bent.

If it is a power sharing port, is there anything in the Bios concerning those USB ports.  If you check the Device Manager, look at the properties for the ports and for that device and see if the Events tab shows a recurring problem.

If you go into the Device Manager with the device plugged in, you can check its properties.  You can also look at some of the USB components in that section.  If the drive was being disconnected by the system it should show something.

If the system is being ejected by the OS it may be a Win 10 situation, although I don't know why only that one port would be involved.

You might also choose to use the "show hidden devices" option in the Device Manger.  You may see several instances of that device in a greyed out condition which means that particular instance is not currently connected.  You could uninstall any of those, if you fine any.  Each port does load drivers for a device, so perhaps the drivers on that port were corrupted.

It appears the drive only has the one connector.  The designation of the ports on the right just means they are the same. 

I've managed to get the errors from the event viewer in windows, I get couple errors, one is this one: Event 51: "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\DR40 during a paging operation."

Event 140, NTFS: "The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur in VolumeId: D:, DeviceName: \Device\HarddiskVolume26.
(A device which does not exist was specified.)"

Hope this would lead to somewhere.. Thanks.

I can't tell for sure the errors are related to the external drive.  The paging reference would seem to be related to your internal drive.  But whatever, maybe just don't use that drive in that port and use the others.  You can get USB C to USB A adapters if you have devices which are USB A...

I have ordered one of those drives and will test it when it comes in, probably on Wednesday.  But I do not have your system so it won't really prove anything unless I also have problems..

I got the drive and was able to use the USB C on one system to do a System Image backup.

I took it to my Desktop which has USB C 3.1 and the drive seems to work normally.

Did you ever uninstall all instances of the drive you can see when you enable the view hidden devices in the Device Manager...?

I also ran across something else that might relate to the flushing transaction data in your error messages.  You can use fsutil to manage such things, if it is relevant.  This is an area with which I have no experience, so just look it over to see if anything makes sense.

If you don't know, you can get info from a command by just typing the command or putting a /? after it.  Then you can add follow on switches and go down the list.

Open an admin command prompt and type the command below.  You will also need to know the drive letter of the WD external drive, if it is giving you one.

fsutil

Then follow with fsutil info ?:\ to get a listing with the actual drive letter, not the question mark.  You might copy and paste the listing so I can compare.  Again, I do not know for sure if this has anything to do with your situation.

If you can't get a drive letter, put it into one of the other ports where you can run the command.