Context: this is a legit screenshot I took on my workplace around 1.5 years ago. Hopefully it’s been patched by now? Completely ridiculous behavior

  • HerbSolo@lemmy.world
    30·
    8 months ago

    I’m having the same issue at work at the moment. When I connect to my dual monitor setup at work, all my usb devices stop working. Mouse, keyboard, the internal camera, monitors… All dead till you reboot, then they work for 10 Minutes again.

    Now i have the same Monitor setup at home, no issues here. Mind you, it’s a Lenovo ThinkPad with Lenovo monitors and it worked for years without issues.

    The Lenovo technician told our IT guy that’s because my monitor setup at home is another generation with a different chipset in the usb hub/switch. After giving us a few tips that didn’t work, like disconnecting the Monitors from power for a minute or using a different port on the notebook they defaulted to “You’re shit out of luck because the support ends after 4 years” - The monitors are 4 years old.

    • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
      1·
      8 months ago

      Lenovo docks need firmware updates to work right. When they work they work great, but Lenovo docks sure are bitches when they don’t work.

      If all your USB devices stop working, that sounds more like a hardware fault or a laptop issue to me. Something is killing the USB subsystem, which is either a driver issue or something in the CPU (which handles USB these days).

      It’s possible the monitors are somehow negotiating something that the CPU doesn’t actually support (which would still be a laptop problem) or maybe there’s something fucky going on in the hardware, but I doubt it’s got much to do with generations of anything.

      I had to mess with some BIOS settings to make Lenovo docks work right. I can’t remember if it was because the dock wouldn’t work unless or because I had it connected on boot, but I believe I had to disable some thunderbolt relayed security system until a BIOS update finally fixed it.

      That said, my thinkpad has a normal HDMI port but that’s not working right on Linux, unlike the docked outputs which seem to be working a lot better. Something to do with the USB video being routed to the Intel GPU and the HDMI being connected to the Nvidia GPU if I recall correctly. Just goes to show that going back to the olden days isn’t necessarily the solution…

      • HerbSolo@lemmy.world
        1·
        8 months ago

        Thanks for your input. I think there’s some software bug causing this, the same hardware worked without issues for years and now, not all of us are affected (all devs are using the same laptop) Anyways, I won’t waste too much time analyzing this, I’m doing mostly home office as a workaround and the ops guys are going to take a look next week.