Issue with Dell Thunderbolt Dock
Hi, I hope I have the right place to ask about this!
I have a Dell XPS 15 9570 Laptop that I use for work.
I am using a Dell Thunderbolt Dock, WD19TBS 30w, because I had found a source suggesting that this was the most compatible model for my laptop.
I have it connected to 3 monitors via a KVM switch, so I can go between my work laptop and my personal computer seamlessly.
I have noticed lately that whenever I use my switch to go from my PC to my laptop, my laptop has shut down whenever I try to return to it.
It shows an error that says my Dock fan failed.
Looks just like this, but this is not my photo:
In the past, this would happen occasionally, and I have been able to just ignore this error by clicking 'Continue' and my laptop starts up like normal. I found one suggestion that someone was able to fix it by just plugging in their laptop's power cable so that it could receive power from the charger instead of from the dock. This solution did not seem to work for me, however, so I just dealt with having the occasional crash and/or dismissing this error when I would restart my machine.
With my laptop now crashing every single time I swap from 1 machine to the other, though, it's starting to get to me and I want to figure out if there is anything I can do to fix it. For a few months I was not using my dock and working from my couch, and my laptop did not have any issues staying on overnight. I missed having 3 screens, though, so I really want this setup to work for me without continuous issues!
Does anyone know if there is anything I can do to troubleshoot this or fix this, or if my dock is just a lost cause at this point? I don't want to have to buy a new one, but if the issue is with the model itself, could anyone recommend a dock that is compatible with my machine?
I don't even see this laptop listed in the Dell dock compatibility chart, I only found the recommendation for the dock I currently have by looking at older charts. Maybe that was my mistake for picking an outdated dock model. I can't afford to replace my laptop, sadly, I got this one from my company but our new management stopped offering to provide us with machines.
(P.S. I want to also note that while I am experiencing this consistently after using my KVM to swap machines, I also experience occasional random crashes while in the middle of trying to use my laptop while everything is still properly connected. I would expect that a dock with 3 ports would be able to handle being connected to 3 monitors, but I'm not sure if the KVM middleman has anything to do with it, or if the laptop model itself is just not able to handle it...)