Stability issues when using Extreme X1 with TP Thunderbolt 3 Dock

[adamelg]

I've been experiencing general stability issues with the ThunderBolt 3 dock. I purchased Extreme X1 for work because of the impressive specs and portability of the device. Overall I've been very pleased with the performance and build quality of the device and Lenovo's software suite makes keeping everything up to date really easy.

WIth that said, I've had LOTS of issues with general stability of this product. It appears to Lenovo had issues with the discrete graphics (Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050 ti) which may have mostly been resolved with the latest update.

I'm on a fairly recent version of Windows 10 (1803). When using the Thunderbolt 3 dock I still experience lots of issues where the device freezes or becomes unresponsive when docking or undocking. Often times I must force power off the device completely because the device is unable to wake from sleep correctly when docked. I have not tested whether device itself is unable to wake from sleep or if it's just because it is connected from the Dock.

However sometimes the device WILL wake correctly but then certain functions will not work, notable USB data will not work often but will be powered (keyboard lights are on but can't use caps lock, for example). Or sometimes the VIDEO won't display at all (thunder bolt graphics issue with discrete GPU) however I can clearly see caps lock works on my keyboard. Note all mentions of keyboard here refer to a USB keyboard wired to the TB dock. 

Also worth noting often when I come back to the docked computer after a certain period of inactivity, often the device will blue screen (I think this may be resolved with Nvidia update already) or be unresponsive. The unresponsiveness appears to be the USB issue, where USB data stops passing through. Docking and undocking will often resolve this issue but obviously you should NOT have to undock a laptop once docked, this is THE WHOLE POINT OF A DOCK.

Now perhaps I'm an idiot but generally speaking not since I work for a consulting technology firm as an engineer. If these issues are this difficult for me I can only imagine how much difficulty the average consumer is having. Keep things simple or people will stop buying your products, whether or not they are engineers. 

Notes about my configuration:

• I set BIOS to discrete graphics only. (FYI I think your Vantage team should be aware you cannot get the graphics driver update correctly since Vantage can't tell what the Intel graphics version is when in discrete mode forcing me to choose IGNORE UPDATE if i already i have the update).
• I installed the Thunderbolt software to manage/see thunderbolt devices. The Dock is authorized already
• 16 GB model with 256 G SSD, 8850H CPU. 

MAKE IT WORK please! 

[adamelg]

Anyone? I'm having the SAME ISSUE every morning where I MUST FORCE SHUT DOWN THE COMPUTER TO USE IT WITH THE DOCK

this is NOT ACCEPTABLE

I tried to open a ticket and then received a call from Lenovo support before hearing "not my department".

This is not the level of service I'd expect for $2500 for a computer/dock. 

[adamelg]

Same issue is happening with a different ThunderBolt 3 dock when connecting via separate power adapter and Thunderbolt cable. This is clearly not a hardware issue and is a software problem.

Would be really nice if there are any humans at Lenovo who actually understand the way the dock works...

[adamelg]

I've come to the conclusion these devices simply cannot be turned on from the dock when they are sleeping/hibernating. This is a bug and only work around is to start the latpop, wait for it to boot/resume into Windows, and then dock.

Everything else on the laptop seems super stable and rock solid at this point but very annoying...