Hi,

I went through the Lenovo hotline but they weren't of any help.

All drivers and the Dock's firmware are up to date. I'm running Windows 10 64bit. I'm on the T480s, it and the dock are roughly 1 month old, and it all works well save for this one issue.

To the dock, I have connected a very simple keyboard and mouse, a 1440p monitor via DP (before, I had 2 FullHDs; didn't seem to make a difference) and RJ45 as well as 3.5mm audio at the front.

Very randomly, the dock crashes. The external monitor just blanks, my speakers crack briefly and everything is off, except for the T480s itself. It has *never* crashed and keeps running. When the crash happens, the internal monitor briefly blanks and then comes back to life with all currently opened windows. Nothing is lost. It's as though I unplug the Thunderbolt Cable from the laptop; exact same behaviour as far as the laptop is concerned.

It is terribly hard to describe what causes it (hence no results googling), after weeks of it occuring I have still not found any pattern. Stuff I know:

- happened 20-30 times by now, so roughly once daily.

- updating all drivers and the dock firmware seemed to have helped a bit, but it still occurs

- every single time but once it was while I used Firefox!

   - doing mundane tasks like  opening a new tab, it crashes

   - once I was over 20 minutes into watching Netflix when it crashed, so I didn't do anything actively there

- one time, it crashed the moment I plugged in my phone via USB3, into the LAPTOP's (not the dock's!) USB3-charging slot. The laptop kept working normally, the dock crashed - as described above.

After it crashes, the Thunderbolt cable (I'm using the one that came with the dock) emits a very weird fizzing, crackling noise at the Laptop's Thunderbolt3-Port. This worries me the most, but it seems like it hasn't damaged anything yet. It sounds like a taser going off, just less extreme of course.

To fix the crash, I have yet to find a replicable solution. Currently, I restart and replug the laptop into the station multiple times until it works. Turning off the laptop and waiting a couple of minutes seems to help. This indicates a relation to temperature to me, however the laptop is not super hot; at max, it's warm on the keyboard surface and 'very warm' (sorry, not very helpful I know) on the bottom. CPU temperatures show normal behaviour at around 55°C at normal use. I have since angled the laptop slightly, leaving a bigger gap of air at the vents; it feels cooler, the problem still occurs.

I can't confirm this yet, but plugging in the laptop after it exits sleep mode seems to worsen the problem. When I get home and shut the laptop down normally, then plug it into the station and boot everything up, it seems to help - it still occurs though!

The support will be supplying me with a new dock, I am not confident it'll help. I will report back with results if this thread is not solved until then.

Thank you very much for reading through it all! Cheers.

Hi, welcome to the forum.

I don't have that configuration but I would do the following "trial and error" to see if something improves.

1) First the obvious. You already updated the drivers and firmware of the dock from the support site:

https://support.lenovo.com/au/en/solutions/acc100356

Check also that the T480s firmware and drivers are also updated. Update the BIOS, Thundebolt related drivers and video drivers.

https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-t-series-laptops/thinkpad-t480s-type-20l7-20l8/downloads

2) Can you try the dock on some other Thunderbolt 3 machine? I know it may be hard to find some one, but if you have someone at the office that can help you if the dock also behavies that bad with a different computer. Or if you can find arround someone with a T480s to try it too , it would be great

3) 

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the Thunderbolt cable (I'm using the one that came with the dock) emits a very weird fizzing, crackling noise at the Laptop's Thunderbolt3-Port.

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That is very strange. I don't think that a sound from the cable is that normal. Maybe if you can find a different cable to do some "trial and error" would be interesting too.

4) It may be a faulty harware too. Remember also that you can open a formal ticket to Lenovo to ask for a replacement if the product is on Warranty. Sometimes for docks and accessories it is better to open the ticket by phone, since the online system in some cases won't recognize the serial number of accessories.

Please post back if you have any progress. It is an interesting case that I never hear before on these forums.

Regards

Hi, thanks for your reply.

Addressing your proposed solutions:

1) as you stated, that is taken care of.

2) I can't do that right now, no. There's nothing available for the extensive testing that would be needed.

3) That's another good guess, I have yet to pull the trigger on that one. I don't feel like spending money unless it's decently likely it's the solution.

4) This is what I did some time ago already. The replacement dock arrived a couple of days ago and I have been using it since *without* any crashing. Since the crashes occur so awfully randomly, I don't want to call the issue resolved just now. Maybe in another week of usage without problems.

When I contacted the support, they mentioned how the crackling noise is out of the ordinary, and how it could be a faulty cable. I understood that the replacement dock would come with another cable as well, but it didn't. It was just the dock, so I'm using that one with the cable provided with the original dock.

Now, something different:

On the old dock, it occured once that suddenly, the sound crashed. But just the sound this time, contrary to the phenomenom described above! On the new dock, this has happened three times within a few days already!

It would occur randomly as well. In the middle of doing something, the sound goes off and switches to the in-Laptop speakers. Checking what happened revealed that Windows suddenly does not recognize the Thunderbolt 3 Dock Audio being plugged in. See the attached image.

In the front audio, I have an amplifier plugged in. The amp feeds sound to two simple speakers as well as headphones. A very simple setup. I'm using a 3.5mm Audio Jack to Cinch cable that is of decent quality.

As the sound crashed, I tested two things: plugging in my in-ears directly into the Thunderbolt 3-Dock made Windows recognize them and it'd work. It showed as 'Plugged in'. At the same time, plugging the 3.5mm from the amp into my phone revealed that that works as well.

So everything is fine from a hardware perspective, but the combination of amp and Dock seems to malfunction.

This issue is less severe than the full-on crash, but it is getting very frustrating here. Especially because I don't feel like I'm asking much of the dock, and the errors are utterly random.

If it persists and no solution is provided here, my next step would be to buy another cable. I would then report back.

Cheers!

EDIT: Usually, the sound issue is fixed by rebooting a couple of times and re-plugging cables. Basically as random as it occurs. This time, I am unable to fix it after tinkering for over an hour now. The dock outputs sound to my headphones just fine, and the amp takes sound from my phone just fine. But amp and dock just don't go together. Something super curious though: occasionally, when I turn the amp on/off, my external display briefly blanks. It's hilarious, but not in a good sense. As if something is wired up really wrong. Note that this is now on the replacement dock, and that the issue happened on the original one as well (but only now persists).

A new Thunderbolt3-Cable was ordered and will arrive soon. I will report back.

Edit2: Some more clicking around aimlessly has resulted in a fix, for now. Immediately after fixing, I restarted, and it still works. So perhaps it's more permanent. What I did was to uninstall the program called 'Thunderbolt 3 Dock USB Audio' or something. I expected the Thunderbolt 3 Audio to disappear from the device manager, but it didn't. I can't bring the program back either, because executing the downloadable driver executive for the dock results in it telling me that I already have that installed. Which is true, since I do have the programs called 'Thunderbolt 3 Dock and USB-C Dock' as well as 'Ethernet Adapter Driver' still. Long story short: I have no idea what the program did in the first place.

What I did as well was to disable the Microphone from the Dock in the Recording tab in the Windows Sound settings. Since the Dock Front Audio Port is a headset hybrid, I thought maybe it doesn't fare well with my purely audio amplifier. So now, the Dock Front Audio is hopefully treated more like just a sound output.

The two things mentioned above fixed it for now. Unfortunately, I can't tell which one or if both helped. I'm not being very helpful or systematic/smart here, but since there is virtually no info on the Lenovo Dock yet, I felt like writing everything down. Most google-able info is on Dell hardware currently, or of people plugging the dock into the USB-C charging port....

I'm having VERY similar issues with my Thunderbolt 3 dock and a Thinkpad X1 Yoga (Gen 3). Looking forward to hearing if the replacement dock resolves the issue for you. I additionally purchased a new Tbolt 3 cable because the one included with the docking station was way too short. The cable did not fix the issue for me. 

It seems like this is somewhat common for Thunderbolt-based docking solutions. Googling I have found people with HP laptops having the same problem. I also had a Surface Book 2 that I replaced because the docking solution was so unreliable and that is based on Thunderbolt (although it's TB2) as well. I'm a bit disheartened by the whole thing. 

Hi,

thanks for posting and letting me know I'm not alone.

I've waited for some time now, and am now confident to get back to you with results.

The new TB3 40Gbps cable I ordered I never unboxed, I ended up not needing it!

Since my last post, I have not changed anything:

1. uninstalled Thunderbolt 3 Dock USB Audio. I didn't know what I was doing, and still don't. The program is gone, nothing has changed for me. I don't know what it was good for. So be careful with this one.
2. got a replacement Thunderbolt Dock. It arrived via courier, which was nice. But even with this new one, the fizzing noise described in the OP can still occur.
3. Disabled Thunderbolt Dock Microphone. From gut feeling, I feel like this is the kicker out of the three. As described, I'm using the Thunderbolt Dock's front 3.5mm audio jack purely for playback. No recording, no headset, nothing special.
4. Removed permanent SD card. I don't think this has anything to do with it, but adding it for completeness. I thought it was a good idea to have an SD card plugged in permanently, as a sort of thumb drive that's always available. I ended up never using it anyway and just unplugged it.

The result is that I've had a stable system for roughly a week now; no crashes. I suspect the complete crashes are connected to the just-audio-crashes. Further, I strongly suspect it's a pure software issue, making me fear for further updates breaking it (in regards to Windows 10's general arbitrariness).

What still remains: plugging the laptop into the dock and waking it from sleep mode is still haywire. From there, crashes can still occur. However, I have not had even one crash (neither audio nor complete) after booting it up properly. So this is good.

I'd be interested in hearing from others and any updates from Lenovo.

Cheers

Edit: I formatted the four reasons in a neat numbered list. It shows correctly in the 'Rich Text' editor, but is broken in the regular thread view....

I have the identical issue with the T480s and the thunderbolt 3 docking station.  Unstable display from the monitor, loss of USB functions to my external keyboard.   As OP had mentioned, when things go haywaire a crackling noise will happen and at some point unless I unplug/replug the computer will periodically crash entirely.

Not sure what the issue is here but here is my setup. 

• 2 external monitors connected via the two DVI ports. 
• Laptop lid is open to acting as a third display
• 1x external keyboard connected to hub
• 1x wireless headset usb dongle connected to hub
• Ethernet cable connected to hub
• 1x wireless mouse connected to laptop usb

What's interesting is when removing one of the USB devices (e.g. keyboard) the flicking/crackling monitor display issues will happen much later and not as fast.  Initially I had thought a bad keyboard was the cause to the issue since windows would notify "USB device malfunctioned and not recognized" error message once the thunderbolt hub starts to become unstable.  Removing the keyboard or even removing all USB devices on the hub, I will eventually get the same flicking/crackling display issues but no "USB device malfunctioned" error. 

My thoughts is there is some serious firmware issues with the laptop and hub conflicting with Windows 10.  Today, I'll trying out if limiting my display to only the external monitors with the laptop lid closed will help with what I'm guessing a bandwidth management issue on the hub that is causing all the issues regardless if a usb device is connected or not.  As mentioned, when all usb devices is connected to the hub it greatly speeds up the process where the crackling/display input issues occurs.  This theory seems to coincide with the audio management issue as well from what OP had mentioned as a turn around.  However, seeing that OP is still seeing instability display issues here and there, it leads me to believe there is an bandwidth output/resource management issue with the hub.