How do I debug this problem with a laptop sometimes not seeing some dock connections?

I have an HP ZBook laptop running Windows 10. This is a work machine with a corporate-controlled OS image, but I have some admin rights on the machine.^[1] The machine was issued to me about 20 months ago and the Windows specific version is 1703.

I use this laptop with an HP docking station (also corporate-issued). The docking station has an attached monitor which in turn has USB keyboard and mouse attached to it, and also has an Ethernet cable. The laptop itself does not have an Ethernet jack, so I have to either use the dock or use WiFi. (Or, I suppose, get an adapter that I don't currently have.)

I used this setup without issues in the office pre-pandemic, and borrowed another dock (exact same model) to take home last year. For the first several months I used it at home with WiFi, but eventually rearranged things so I could use it with a wired connection.

The problem: Every morning when I boot the laptop (it stays plugged in to the dock all the time), on the first boot the laptop does not see the Ethernet and there's about a 50/50 chance it sees the keyboard and mouse. (It reports the network problem in the form of a red X; it just doesn't respond to the input devices.) However, it sees the monitor just fine -- the image comes up on the external monitor, not the laptop screen, as expected. The only thing that seems to fix it when this happens is to hard-reboot (disconnecting/reconnecting the dock doesn't work). Almost always, on the second boot everything works fine. Occasionally (once every couple weeks, maybe), the second boot is like the first and I have to go to a third. It's never taken more than three. The problem with not seeing the keyboard and mouse predates my switch to Ethernet.

The frequency of this problem has increased; it used to happen maybe once a week, but is now a daily occurrence. Since I have (currently) one dock and one laptop, I can't easily swap something out to narrow down the problem. I've already swapped in new cables everywhere; no change. I've also tried plugging the keyboard and mouse directly into the dock. None of that produced a noticeable change.

My vision is poor and I find it very challenging to use the laptop without the external monitor. If there are specific things I should check for sans dock I can, but I haven't spent much time poking around in that configuration on my own.

What might be causing the problem? How should I approach further debugging? This smells like a problem with the laptop rather than the dock, but that's just a guess and either way I don't know what to try next.

posted over 3 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Monica Cellio‭ staff

846 reputation 23 13 131 38