“DisplayLink USB Graphics Software” vs “DisplayLink Manager Graphics Software”

[bxd76]

Hello.

I’m totally new to DisplayLink and somewhat new to MacOS. So I appreciate everyone’s patience if this is a dumb question.

Currently we have an iMac running Catalina 10.15.7.

We have a USBA port connected to a DVI converter box, with a VGA dongle on it, running VGA to a projector.
Then we also have a USBC port going to a converter box with dual HDMI ports, and one of those HDMI runs to a second projector.

Lately we’ve had an issue where every so often while using ProPresenter, the Mac screen goes black for a second, the projector stops projecting and then everything comes back.

Looking in the Mac OS console for clues, I found a ton of errors:

WindowServer ERROR Unable to find display pipe for IOFB service


Googling that error brought me to these forums.

Someone said the error is fixed in newer DisplayLink software.

Currently we’re using the DisplayLink USB Graphics 5.2.6 package released back in May 2021.

1. Do you think my video dropouts are due to old DisplayLink software?
2. Should we first try the newer DisplayLink 1.5 software that’s still Catalina compatible?
Why did the numbering jump from 5.2.6 to 1.5? Is it going to be compatible with ProPresenter or am I going to run into other problems?

Or should I first upgrade MacOS?

Or am I way off base for my root problem?

Thank you.

[dbienkowski]

Hi bxd76,

Thank you for reaching us out. To answer your questions. It is my opinion that the droputs should not be caused by an older version of the driver, but of course it is worth trying a newer one.
Version 5.2.6 is an old kext based driver, when the new version numbered from 1.0 is already an application that was supposed to work with newer versions of the system. Unlike the driver, it requires you to have the app enabled so you can display the image on your external devices.

Of course, if your iMac can be upgraded to a newer version of macOS you can do so and then use the newer version of the app.

If you have any further problems I'm happy to help you here, or you can contact our support directly.