Monday 1 March 2021

CalDigit TS3 Plus Thunderbolt 3 Docking Station - Issues with Windows 10 USB Devices

Background:
I've been having a few USB connection and power issues with the CalDigit TS3 Plus Docking Station (even after the January 2021 version 44.1 firmware update from CalDigit themselves). This is especially the case when I power up the laptop separately from the dock and then plug it in whilst still on.

The Problem:
The display adapters would work - but USB connectivity and audio was failing  - even after plugging and unplugging USB and associated devices and powering down the hub. All USB devices wouldn't even power up when the issue was in effect.

Discovery/Resolution Steps: 
The only thing that would fix it (most of the time) was a full power down restart.

Looking at Device Manager - I was getting a Code 31 saying that the "Object Name Already Exists". In the Device Event history, the following error kept appearing:

Device PCI\VEN_1B73&DEV_1100&SUBSYS_11061AB6&REV_10\8&1b6ac812&0&0000000800E0 was not migrated due to partial or ambiguous match.

Uninstalling and reinstalling these Generic USB Host Controllers "USB xHCI Compliant Host Controller" didn't work.


There is a teardown video of this dock with details of all the chips/controllers inside that gave me an idea - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f6Zs1JyZBQ. Looking up the Vendor and Device details in the red error above, it seems that the USB Controller Chip used in the CalDigit docking station is the Fresco Logic xHCI 1100 (USB3) Controller.

After a short search I found the following device driver page for that company to try (rather than the Generic Microsoft xHCI Host Controller driver) - https://support.frescologic.com/portal/en/kb/articles/latest-drivers  

Once I installed this, the device was correctly recognised in Windows and no reboot required. It has worked without issue post installation of the Fresco driver (fingers crossed!). I believe that this Fresco Driver installation should go on the CalDigit support page to resolve this issue as the default Generic Drivers seem to have problems.

1 comment:

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