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Old 04-15-2017, 12:01 AM   #1
jeremy
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Default 8.2 Mixed Results with Computer Crashes

Hello,

My company has had Dell's D1000 docks for ~3-4 months and have experienced issues related primarily to user-mode driver crashes. We've tried dock driver versions ranging from 7.9 to 8.1, but ultimately they all ended with the same result. Installing 8.2 has had positive results for my group of alpha testers, but I have had several come forward with issues that I don't believe to be related to the user-mode driver crashes because of a total lack of event viewer logs. We typically see driver framework critical errors, but not in these cases. Here's my environment:

Windows 10 version 1607 build 14393
Office 2016 version 1611-1702
Dell E5270/E5570 (12 and 15 inch) laptops
Dell D1000 docks
Two 1920x1080 Dell monitors connected with one Display Port and one VGA/HDMI-to-DVI
Mouse/keyboard/headset

These deployments are 3-4 months old and geographically spread out across the United States.

Our users operate similarly to a call center, with Skype for Business as our telephony solution. We access custom company apps through RDS. Other commonly used apps are Outlook, IE, Edge, Chrome, and Spotify.

Here's a description of the issues:
1. The users state that they are unable to click between Outlook and Skype for Business. This issue is not persistent, but rather intermittent. It seems that giving the laptop a graphics refresh, such as unplugging/replugging the dock, will give them the screens back. The windows are transparent and occupy a section of the screen, but the content of the windows simply do not show. The screens are not frozen and the dock has not crashed. I'm wondering if this may be some form of screen redraw.
2. The computer crashes. The screens retain a frozen image of the images that were last on them. When the user opens the laptop, the screen is entirely black. The user must hold down the power button to force the computer to turn off.Upon reboot, everything reconnects. This has been reported by several users, but I cannot replicate. The hardware appears to be good after diagnostics and switching out to different docks/cables, but the issue persists.

In both cases, I do not see any errors in the event logs and I have been unsuccessful in replicating this issue. We've been actively trying to squeeze as much performance as we can out of these laptops and it seems to be helping since we first rolled the laptops out, but these two issues seem to be prevalent among my users. We've also tried updating Office, but to no avail. The one thing we have not yet done is update Windows, but I'm not aware of any update that would help with this issue. If there is one out there, I'm willing to try it.
I also wanted to make a note that we seem to see more issues related to the Dell Giga Ethernet part of the driver. Is there any kind of known issues with that driver, or any performance enhancements we could do?

Please let me know if there's anything I can provide or any further steps I can do.

Thanks!
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Old 04-18-2017, 03:34 PM   #2
AlbanRampon
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Hello Jeremy,

Thank you for reporting in details, this is helpful.

On 1, I think you may be hitting an issue many have observed on that version of Windows where screen updates don't work, unless you resize or otherwise force a full screen refresh.
From my personal experience, all applications were suffering, with Google Chrome browser window *content* being frozen, even when moving the window itself.
This was an issue very apparent when using multiple screens, and Microsoft fixed it last month.
Would you please be able to try the Windows 10 Creators Update (Build 15063)?

On the machine crash, can you check if you have a memory minidump from the moment it takes place? (https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dump-bsod.html)
DisplayLink doesn't have enough privilege to switch off the onboard video on Windows 10 Anniversary Update onwards, and we were not doing it earlier either.
It could be a graphics driver problem, an old driver not able to follow the new graphics requirements. I can look into that.
If you look at the last link of my signature, there are step to provide log files using a diagnostic tool. From that tool, I can look at the graphics driver version for the platform.

On the Ethernet, we have noticed a speed reduction on some connections. We have modified this in our 8.2 M1 release I'd like to encourage you to try. The speed achieved is higher in both 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps connections. I have put the Setup.exe, MSI and INF installs on our website earlier today.

Kind regards,
Alban
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Old 04-18-2017, 05:57 PM   #3
jeremy
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Hey Alban,

Thanks for the reply. I'm excited to work with you to a resolution. If there's anything you need from me, just let me know!

I actually rebuilt my computer from scratch and am running the same version of Windows, Office, and the new 8.2 driver so I can see what my testers are seeing. Regarding the screen refresh issue, I was able to replicate one example on my PC that may or may not be related. I have attached it and titled it "screen_issue1". Additionally, one of my testers reported another example of an issue there were seeing that may potentially be redraw. I have titled that screenshot "screen_issue2".
On screen_issue1, the application is a chat window in Skype for Business 2016 with OWA email through Chrome in the background. The border of the chat window is visible, but the contents are entirely invisible. I am able to move the window around, resize it, and even click on buttons that would normally exist within the window. Unplugging and replugging the dock did not reset the window.
On screen_issue2, the user is potentially seeing screen redraw or artifacts left behind. A reboot/unplug typically solves this issue.

For the machine crash, I do a memory minidump and it is saved on the local server. I will be moving to our primary office after hours so I don't choke the WAN link. These PCs are relatively new (3-4 months) and received updated drivers from Dell via the Dell Command Update tool. I understand that new drivers come out, but would a 3-4 month old driver make the difference?

I'm currently using SCCM install the MSI for 8.2 on my test PCs so we should be good there. I was curious because we've seen a good number of errors in the event viewer with the Dell Giga Ethernet part of the driver either resetting or failing. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks again for your help!
Attached Images
File Type: jpg screen_issue1.jpg (6.2 KB, 1 views)
File Type: jpg screen_issue2.jpg (94.3 KB, 2 views)
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Old 04-18-2017, 06:39 PM   #4
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UPDATE:
One of my users has experienced a crash. She has the latest driver (8.2.1491.0). The error is a User-mode Driver error, but the errors are not very specific. She'll receive 5 critical errors for DriverFrameworks-UserMode, two of which are event ID 10110 and three of which are event ID 10111. Attached are the screenshots of the errors and the support tool information.
Please let me know what we can do.

Thanks!
Attached Images
File Type: jpg error10110.jpg (19.2 KB, 2 views)
File Type: jpg error10111.jpg (19.2 KB, 2 views)
Attached Files
File Type: zip TUP-SHARON_20170418_124228.zip (1.45 MB, 1 views)

Last edited by jeremy; 04-18-2017 at 06:48 PM.
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Old 04-19-2017, 01:29 PM   #5
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Likewise Jeremy, I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of these.

For the missing content and corrupted content: when the defect is visible on the display, could you please use Print Screen and paste the content on Paint (or anything else)?
Is the defect visible in the Print Screen? If so, then the pixels are wrong well before they are handed over to the DisplayLink driver.
The Print Screen doesn't actually capture what is being displayed, but what is being computed at an earlier stage.
If you see the corruption, then you could try by using more recent graphics drivers. The ones you are running are from September 2016, so not long after Windows 10 Anniversary Update was released.
The latest driver for your plaftorm is Intel graphics driver 4627 (you are running 4531). Please note that the EXE version will probably not work on your Dell if this particular version wasn't accepted by them. To go round this, use the ZIP version through Device Manager.

Strictly speaking the driver you use is not very old but the graphics subsystem changed in Windows 10 Anniversary Update to allow native OS support of indirect displays like DisplayLink technology (we co-developed that with Microsoft). Drivers released before or shortly after the Windows 10 Anniversary Update RTM date are more likely to not implement something properly...
But I do know there is an OS bug fixed in later OS builds so unless you use the Windows 10 Creators Update, you can be sure it's there, waiting to be visible! The resize was working each time for me though so you might have something else.

I don't know about resetting issues on the Ethernet driver and Microsoft hasn't flagged this to us either (telemetry). I will look at the logs.
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Alban Rampon
Senior product manager, universal docking stations and accessories
"DisplayLink is proud to be a Synaptics brand."

Where to download the latest DisplayLink drivers
How to clean up a corrupted installation
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Old 04-19-2017, 01:49 PM   #6
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I have analyzed the WUDFHost memory dumps.
Can you confirm their timestamp matches when your machine was hanging?

I see a few things in them. DisplayLink driver is terminated when trying to retry initialization. I've created a bug report for engineering to look at that because, we should not have to retry in the first place. The fact that the dump is created when retrying is a known Windows 10 Anniversary Update limitation. Microsoft kindly changed their USB driver to allow us to retry on Windows 10 Creators Update to work around a hardware issue observed in very old hardware from a specific company.
But all that has no reason to hang the machine: terminating a driver is a normal thing. It should just somewhat gracefully recover.

I don't see anything about the Ethernet driver. Would you have more information on that?

Kind regards,
Alban

My Ref - 25257 FxUsbUmFormatRequest WUDFHost DMP on Dell D1000
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"DisplayLink is proud to be a Synaptics brand."

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How to clean up a corrupted installation
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Old 04-24-2017, 05:08 AM   #7
jeremy
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Hey Alban,

I recently finished testing with a group of about 30 testers over the last week. My testers are still seeing issues, but the driver has helped some people, particularly with CPU usage! Here are some of the scenarios that I have seen with users with issues:
1. Screens freeze (image locked on screens) and dock crashes. When the user opens up the laptop, the laptop has gone to using the built in display and, if the laptop is using Ethernet through the dock, it is on wifi.
2. Screens freeze (image locked on screens) and dock crashes. When the user opens up the laptop, the laptop's built in display is black. I am able to ping the machine (users had ethernet wired directly into the laptop) and start remote sessions (RDP and SCCM), but the screens remain black, even on the remote sessions. The user must manually force the computer to shutdown.
3. Screens freeze (image locked on screens) and dock crashes. The screens eventually resume and all functionality is normal. The duration is about 15 seconds. I should note that it is rare that the dock gracefully recovers like this.

I also want to mention that we have been telling our users to unplug/replug the USB connection into the laptop. In most cases, this will allow the users to regain full functionality in scenario #1. I did notice that some users have complete USB lock up, meaning that the laptop will not reinitialize the dock on any of the USB ports until the PC has rebooted.

Regarding the print screen, I had the tester take a print screen of when she saw the issue, paste it into Word, and then email it to me. The defect did not exist within the print screen. My tester did note that when she took a screenshot that the corrupted content briefly materialized, but it would immediately go back to the corrupted image as soon as she attempted to refresh the screen. I attempted to update to the latest Intel graphics driver, but I was unable to upgrade using the EXE or the ZIP version of the driver. Windows would not recognize the ZIP version as a newer version than what is installed. The driver version is up to date as far as what is on Dell's site (4574).
Regarding the Creator's update, the enterprise ISO is not available until May 1st. I configured our SCCM infrastructure to do in-place feature upgrades, but our company-wide patching is occurring next week so I will need to wait to do the upgrades since I'll need to reset WSUS's synchronization with SCCM. As soon as it is available, I will put the creator's update out to a test group of users.

For the timestamps, I collected that information at the same time that the PC experienced the dock crash so those are accurate. For the ethernet errors, I'll comb through my tester's logs and get screenshots of those and attach them to this thread. The errors are mainly for NDIS and DLCDCNCM where the Dell Giga Ethernet adapter encounters an internal error, but I'll gather the exact logs. We haven't done any performance tuning with group policy/registry to force these adapters remain powered on at all times or disabling IPv6 or anything like that. My thought was maybe that the OS was powering the adapter off at times and thus disrupting the DisplayLink driver. I had a user unplug the ethernet from her dock and the dock crashed as soon as she had done that, so perhaps there's a correlation.

Lastly, I did want to mention again that my organization functions similarly to a call center. We use on-premise Skype for Business as our telephony solution and our users typically speak up about the dock crashes because they frequently occur immediately before/after or on a call. Do you have any known issues with Skype for Business and docks? If not, do you believe these to be just coincidences, or is there anything I can do to test?

Please let me know if there's anything I can provide or any testing I can do!

Thanks!
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Old 04-24-2017, 10:28 PM   #8
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Attached are the screenshots of the ethernet errors we see periodically. These are from the same user's machine and should be a few days after he got the new driver.
Attached Images
File Type: jpg dlc.jpg (13.6 KB, 3 views)
File Type: jpg ndis.jpg (13.5 KB, 3 views)
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Old 04-27-2017, 07:26 PM   #9
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Attached is the ZIP file of one of my users who just experienced the screen corruption issue. I took the diagnostics as the issue was occurring. Please let me know if there's anything I can try.

Thanks!
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File Type: zip OMA-BWILSON_20170427_130344.zip (653.4 KB, 0 views)
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Old 05-02-2017, 05:02 PM   #10
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Exclamation Still having errors

Hey Alban,

Do you have any update from this conversation? I have also sent an email to the technical inquiries with this information as well.

We now have access to the Creator's Update for the Enterprise version of Windows 10 and have been successful in our deployment with SCCM. I will be testing this with an alpha group of testers so I will update when that has finished.

Thanks!
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