Today I had a very strange situation with a external LCD screen connected to my Acer laptop through a USB C docking station. The set up was working absolutely fine for months. Just last night my big screen stopped working and the laptop was beeping every few seconds, it was similar beeping like a device connected to USB port with a faulty plug. My first impression was that the cable got faulty. I replaced the HDMI cable and it was the same. Just in case, I connected my docking hub to a DP cable rather than HDMI and no improvement. Ok, fair enough, let’s check the screen. I connected the screen straight into my laptop – bypassing the USB C docking station. The image appeared straight away on my external screen. So it is not a screen, not a cable, has to be a problem with the USB C docking station then!
Swearing a bit I decided to buy a new USB C hub on Amazon with a next day delivery. Seconds after the courier delivered the new docking station I got another strange result. It is still not working. How possible? Must be something wrong with the USB C socket in my laptop, maybe just one faulty pin or something, as all other devices connected to the hub (like mouse, keyboard) were working absolutely fine!
It was not a good news. Faulty socket in the laptop is a problem – this is what I was thinking, but… I was wrong!
No idea why, just in case, despite the fact I personally was not doing any system changes on my MS Widows system, I decided to restore the OS system to the last restoration point from few weeks in the past.
Guess what? After restoring and restarting the system the big screen started working correctly without any problem. I can only imagine the Windows update did something wrong to some driver(s) and the external screen on my Acer laptop stopped working.
The lesson?
If you have a problem with external screen connected to your laptop though a USB hub (docking station) – check if Windows update did not do a doggy update.
PS. The only one good news is now I have 8k docking station 🙂 which can provide 8K@30HZ or 4K@120HZ monitor, 4K@60HZ dual monitor, 4K@60HZ and 4K@30HZ Triple monitor under DP1.4 protocol – that’s goody 🙂
