Microsoft Surface Pro 3 and Microsoft Surface Dock

[mrschwarz]

I just received a new AOC E1659FWUX USB 3.0 monitor. Plugging it in directly to the single USB port on the laptop caused the monitor to blink on and off rapidly. I then connected the second USB plug from the monitor to the supplied external USB jack on the Surface power supply and the monitor started working. Is this an expected behavior? When the directions referred to older laptops, I thought that the Surface Pro 3 wouldn't be considered old.

A more significant issue is that when I plug the monitor into a USB port on my Surface Dock, the monitor turns on, the PC detects it, but the screen never shows the desktop. After about 15 seconds, the PC loses the connection to the monitor and the monitor's backlight goes out. 15 seconds later, the PC again detects the monitor, but the backlit doesn't light and nothing is displayed.

If I disconnect the monitor from the dock and reconnect it directly to the USB port on the Surface Pro, it works again. I can duplicate this on demand. Attached is the log file generated by your troubleshooting tool.

Also, I am not sure if this should be directed here, but according to what I have read, the brightness and contrast settings are accessed by opening the control panel attached to the icon on the taskbar. There is no icon and I haven't been able to find any control for the USB monitor. Is this a property of the monitor or of Displaylink?

[AlbanRampon]

Hello,
I'll try and answer everything as you touch quite a few things.

1. Brightness and contrast
DisplayLink drivers do NOT change brightness, contrast or colours. Either you have it with an add-on app, or on the monitor, but you won't have it in our drivers.

2. Surface Dock
You'll need to report that to Microsoft. I've personally experienced issues on USB with using the Surface Book and Surface Dock. I'm not the only one. If the device cannot enumerate on the bus, like I had, this isn't a DisplayLink driver issue but this is linked with the USB3 Host Controller and the Surface Dock interfering. Dropping from the bus is the same, it technically cannot be our host drivers.
You have a few options to try: disconnect all, remove our drivers, then update the firmware of your Surface, make sure your Intel graphics drivers are also updated, then reinstall us. The other option is to get out of the Insider Fast Ring and get a version Microsoft supports.

3. Window Insiders Fast Ring
You use a very special version of Windows. Microsoft themselves don't support it.
It has numerous issues reported on blogs, as expected. We don't yet support that version and you should have had a message telling you so. We will support it before Microsoft starts to release it to other people than the Fast Insiders Ring. Until then, it may break at any time.

4. USB Monitor Blinking
The monitor you use, designed and manufactured by AOC, is drawing all its power from the USB port (this includes the chip we make, the backlight and LCD panel).
The blinking you are experiencing is most likely due to a too high inrush current at startup for the USB port. This means your monitor is disconnected, then restarts and loops like that. That's why when you plug it on the external adapter, it works properly. Once running, you might even be able to disconnect it from the power adapter and see it would keep running. This behaviour depends on the tolerance of each port, but also depends on what how monitor manufacturer designed their product.

Kind regards,
Alban

[mrschwarz]

Thanks for the reply. To address your response.
1. I thought I saw that I could adjust the brightness. I cannot find where I found this before. It appears to be a shortcoming of the monitor, since AOC offers no way to adjust this, that I can find.

2. Surface Dock...According to this article: the Surface Dock is compatible.

My drivers and firmware are up to date, so that's not the issue. I'll report it to Microsoft in the insider program, but if you have personally experienced it and are not using an Insider version of Windows, that's most likely not the cause.

Based on your description, it seems like the Dock and your driver don't like each other. I am not a driver or hardware guy, but ... While it may not be 'technically' the fault of your driver, has Displaylink contacted Microsoft about this? My experience has taught me that when two vendors point their fingers at each other over a compatibility priblem rather than working together to resolve it, end users like us are the ones who suffer. I'll search Microsoft support for an answer.

3. I know that the rapid blinking is caused by the current demand of the monitor. When I connect the second USB plug to anything that supplies USB power, the problem goes away. My question was just looking for confirmation that it isn't another issue that allows me to avoid having to mess with more wires than necessary.

Thanks for your prompt and thorough response. I suppose if I replaced the AOC monitor with one that had a brightness control on it, I would solve that issue, but would still be stuck with the Dock issue, right?

[AlbanRampon]

The Surface Dock and DisplayLink products are compatible and our drivers are tested with the different Surface Pro, Surface Book, Surface Docks and different adapters/docks before we release them.
We certainly can have bugs, and we look into them. For instance, a screen blanking bug was reported to us by a user at the end of January which we fixed in our latest release 7.9 M5 (release notes (http://assets.displaylink.com/staging/downloads/release-notes/f560_DisplayLink+USB+Graphics+Software+for+Windows +7.9+M5-Release+Notes.txt)).

However, if a device does not enumerate, would you explain why you believe this is a host software driver problem? Enumeration is the preliminary, low level, introduction to the host controller and OS. Windows does not invoke the drivers at that early stage (getting device descriptors) because it doesn't know which drivers to use until it knows the Device ID (here built from the USB Vendor and Product IDs) from what is connected and how (PCI, USB...).
In the personal experience I stated, DisplayLink drivers were not even installed yet as it was the first connect. That's why I find it difficult to make the link.

Your host software log files (what runs on Windows) indicate that the drivers doesn't get any reply when trying to get the USB descriptors (http://www.keil.com/pack/doc/mw/USB/html/_u_s_b__descriptors.html). Elsewhere in these logs, your device gets USB communications errors. Both are low level problems.
On the firmware side (what runs on the microchip we make which AOC put in the monitor they manufacture), we detect a USB Disconnect event. Again, a low level problem.
Would you be able to try in USB2 to see if this changes something? You can do that by using a USB2 cable or USB2 port to force the AOC monitor in USB2 mode. As it's using a different low level communication mechanism, you could see variations.

If we believe content on Microsoft Answers, people who don't have any DisplayLink software or hardware are advising other Surface Dock users to switch the graphics card off/on in the Device Manager. Microsoft employees are involved in the discussion. That's why I directed you to Microsoft. Especially as you report your AOC monitor connected directly to the Surface Pro works correctly, as it should.

To answer your question, it is standard procedure for developers to exchange bugs with Microsoft through their hardware developer site.
There is nothing like that assigned to us by Microsoft today.
When we have an issue we can resolve, we do try to look into it.
I do understand your frustration. Still, I prefer giving you the most likely reason of the problem, so you have a chance of getting a resolution and can take an informed decision.

[mrschwarz]

The Surface Dock and DisplayLink products are compatible and our drivers are tested with the different Surface Pro, Surface Book, Surface Docks and different adapters/docks before we release them.
We certainly can have bugs, and we look into them. For instance, a screen blanking bug was reported to us by a user at the end of January which we fixed in our latest release 7.9 M5 (release notes (http://assets.displaylink.com/staging/downloads/release-notes/f560_DisplayLink+USB+Graphics+Software+for+Windows +7.9+M5-Release+Notes.txt)).

However, if a device does not enumerate, would you explain why you believe this is a host software driver problem? Enumeration is the preliminary, low level, introduction to the host controller and OS. Windows does not invoke the drivers at that early stage (getting device descriptors) because it doesn't know which drivers to use until it knows the Device ID (here built from the USB Vendor and Product IDs) from what is connected and how (PCI, USB...).
In the personal experience I stated, DisplayLink drivers were not even installed yet as it was the first connect. That's why I find it difficult to make the link.

Your host software log files (what runs on Windows) indicate that the drivers doesn't get any reply when trying to get the USB descriptors (http://www.keil.com/pack/doc/mw/USB/html/_u_s_b__descriptors.html). Elsewhere in these logs, your device gets USB communications errors. Both are low level problems.
On the firmware side (what runs on the microchip we make which AOC put in the monitor they manufacture), we detect a USB Disconnect event. Again, a low level problem.
Would you be able to try in USB2 to see if this changes something? You can do that by using a USB2 cable or USB2 port to force the AOC monitor in USB2 mode. As it's using a different low level communication mechanism, you could see variations.

If we believe content on Microsoft Answers, people who don't have any DisplayLink software or hardware are advising other Surface Dock users to switch the graphics card off/on in the Device Manager. Microsoft employees are involved in the discussion. That's why I directed you to Microsoft. Especially as you report your AOC monitor connected directly to the Surface Pro works correctly, as it should.

To answer your question, it is standard procedure for developers to exchange bugs with Microsoft through their hardware developer site.
There is nothing like that assigned to us by Microsoft today.
When we have an issue we can resolve, we do try to look into it.
I do understand your frustration. Still, I prefer giving you the most likely reason of the problem, so you have a chance of getting a resolution and can take an informed decision.

Sorry about that. I shouldn't have replied when I was still frustrated. I returned the Surface Dock and got an eTauro Mini Dock, which for my purposes is a much better solution and works with the display.

My only remaining issue is the lack of the Displaylink icon in the taskbar. I am pretty sure that it is due to the Insider build that is running on the Surface Pro. I haven't found an easy solution to getting out of Insider builds, so it looks like I am stuck with it until I get around to reloading the OS.

I used the monitor on another PC that is running the production version of Windows 10. The icon appears in the taskbar when the monitor is connected to it. I adjusted the brightness and contrast there and monitor appears to remember the settings. For now, that is an acceptable workaround.

In fact, I just ordered another AOC monitor to add a little more real estate to my work desktop.

Thanks for your help and I apologize again for directing my frustration at you. This has actually been one of the more productive tech support exchanges.

[AlbanRampon]

I understand.

For the missing icon. There is a way to remove it.
May you have a look at the FAQ about hiding the icon to see if you can put a value and put it back?
http://support.displaylink.com/knowledgebase/articles/528017-how-to-hide-the-displaylink-ui-icon-in-the-system

The icon should be present all the time from version 8.0.
This will help people diagnose their problem. Today, you need to have both the adapter/dock and the monitor plugged in to see the icon. The reasoning was that we only display the icon if you can do something with it: if there's a viewer available. But actually seeing there is an adapter but no monitor recognised is helpful information.

[AlbanRampon]

I asked around about this contrast/brightness thing on AOC monitor.
It seems it's a something AOC did to configure the monitor through USB.