Newer Dell Laptops and Weird Dock Network Issue

Question

So I have a weird one occurring that I cant find any other references to online. Support is all but useless on the issue.

If I take my laptop off the dock and work on wifi at another site for a while, then come back and re-dock my laptop. I will show a good ethernet connection but have zero connectivity.

Troubleshooting produced the following details.

-When returning to my dock, the laptop disconnects from wifi and begins using the hardwire as expected.

-Hardwire has a valid and expected IP, subnet mask, gateway, and DNS addresses.

-Running route print shows that the default route has indeed been updated to the hardwire default gateway. No references exist to the wireless at this point.

Since I have no network functionality at this point, I try to ping an address. Lets say googles dns 8.8.8.8. The request will time out and eventually tell me it was unreachable and refence the IP that my wireless had prior to docking the laptop. Remember wireless is disconnected at this point and there are zero references to it shows in ipconfig /all or route print.

At this point I fully disable the wireless adapter. Try to ping again. Same note that the destination is unreachable and references the old wireless IP that the now disabled adapter had several minutes ago.

I have reset winsok, rebuilt TCP stack, on and on and on. This issue keeps happening with all our newer laptops. The only single way to ever fix it is to reboot the laptop. Even taking it off the dock at this point and reconnecting to wifi, it still wont pass any traffic.

I have manually installed drivers from the nic manufactures to try and bypass any dell custom driver issues but to no avail.

I am out of ideas, support is no help, its making us question using dell going forward. So last ditch hail Mary maybe someone here has seen what causes this and knows how to address it.

sfortin · Answer

Are the network interfaces (wired and wireless) using automatic metric? Go into the advanced settings of IPV4 for both interfaces and assign the HW interface to a metric value of 1 and the wireless to a metric of 20 and retest undocking and redocking.

DELL TACO · Answer

Just curious if you have access to the DHCP server for your network when docked? We're having similar issues and are flooded with Bad DHCP Addresses when the problem occurs. No solution here, just curious if it might be a similar problem.

ade333 · Answer

We are having this same exact issue.  Did you manage to find a solution?  We're using Latitude 7410s and 7420s.  The WiFi NICs are the Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201

Bruns_Miriam · Answer

Hello, we have the same issue. Is there a solution?

tjmino · Answer

Same issue here. It has happened on three or four systems so far. Reboot is the only cure that we have found. It just started happening here around three weeks ago. I attributed it to an update or something, but I see where folks have had problems older than that.

Kaopp · Answer

We have exactly the same issue with several Dell Latitude 3410, 3420, and Inspiron 5491.

Connect to WiFi is fine, but once disconnect the WiFi then using docking station, windows still tried to go out via wireless gateway, even all routing table, default gateway configuration are correct.

I can't find any logical reason for this kind of behaviour and I believe it could be an combined issue of nic drivers/ bios and other hardware?

We really need Dell to look into this.

DELL-Jesse L · Answer

Kaopp, We request you to update the drivers and check if the issue occurs.below is the link to download and update the drivers.https://dell.to/3buSBY7https://dell.to/3OkdQdw

ade333 · Answer

Has anyone resolved this?  Updating drivers / dock firmware hasn't helped.

ade333 · Answer

To be clear, the issue were' having is the one Dell Taco identified with the Bad Addresses filling up DHCP

ade333 · Answer

If Drivers/Dock Firmware fixed this for you, could you please share the version you know is working?  Thanks so much

SassmasterSlim · Answer

We are also encountering this as well. Is there any fix for this Dell? Or are we going to have to force all of your devices in our organization to wifi or hardwired only and start looking for other computer providers?

Latitude

Newer Dell Laptops and Weird Dock Network Issue

Was this post helpful?