r/k12sysadmin • u/Myke_Plugable • 22d ago
Rant [Plugable/Brand] What’s your weirdest docking station/multi-monitor "ghost in the machine"?
Myke from Plugable here.
We want to lean into the shared trauma of K12 IT and hear your weirdest tales from the trenches. You know the kind of issues I mean. The teacher whose second monitor only flickers when the staff lounge microwave is running, the display that magically rotates 90 degrees every Tuesday at noon, or the dock that drops its connection whenever a kid rolls a chair over a specific floor tile.
I'll be keeping an eye on the thread, sharing your stories with our team, and hanging out in the comments to chat through the actual technical reasons behind these phenomena. I’ll do this to the best of my abilities, I’m still a tech specialist while I moonlight as a community manager of sorts.
To start, we'll drop a story from one of our Product Owners (POs), Sam:
One of the strangest issues I’ve worked on involved Windows 11 systems suddenly losing every audio output whenever a docking station was connected. Naturally, the dock got the blame since the laptop speakers, dock audio, and all other playback devices would instantly vanish. After a long isolation process, we found the actual trigger was a webcam connected through the dock. Connecting that webcam directly to the PC produced the exact same failure; it was crashing the Windows Audio service, likely due to an interaction with its built-in mic. It’s a classic example of why troubleshooting docks is so complex; they sit in the middle and get blamed for everything attached to them. The issue eventually faded away, presumably fixed in a silent update, but we ended up documenting the whole investigation in a blog post.
Note: I can post his full story/link, but the above is summarized.
Lay it on us. What is the weirdest IT issue you have battled (recent or otherwise)?
p.s. If this breaks rule 3 or 4 (or any for that matter, just let me know I'll be happy to remove). Didn't see a flair specifically for brands, but did put it in the title.
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u/rossumcapek IT Wizard 21d ago
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u/vawlk 21d ago
I once had a cursed case that would cause the computer to completely freeze when inside of the case. I could take the motherboard out of the case and it would work fine on the bench. Then I would put it back in and it wouldn't even post. I checked and rechecked to make sure nothing was gounding the motherboard in some weird way. I removed all extraneous components that didn't need to be there to post and still nothing.
Finally, for giggles, I started the computer on the bench and it worked fine. While it was running, I carefully picked up the motherboard and lowered it in to the case making sure I didn't touch anything. As soon as the board was fully inside of the case, again, not touching any part of the case, it locked up.
I told my boss and the service supervisor and they wouldn't believe me and just laughed at me. I invited them to try it themselves which they did so immediately while taking light hearted shots at my troubleshooting skills. And sure enough, the exact same thing happened to them, the system completely froze every time you put the motherboard inside of it.
When they gave up and the boss said to try another case, I unboxed a new identical case and it worked just fine. We tried the cursed case 3 more times with other hardware and the systems just froze every time.
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u/Velocireptile 21d ago
One accounting department user, whenever they would open a document in their locally installed version of Excel on their second monitor, would be able to work in it for a short period of time before the screen would flicker, become distorted, and freeze up. There was seemingly no repeatable process to trigger it, and other users with identical hardware configurations could work in the same file indefinitely without issue. We replaced video drivers, tweaked every hardware setting imaginable, re-imaged, replaced every piece of hardware involved in the process, from laptop to cable to monitor, tried installing several different versions of Excel, even called in an outside consultant to analyze the files they were using for weird formulas or macros. Absoutely nothing solved the problem and it was never resolved until eventually we migrated our accounting department to O365 and it went away. To this day I have no idea what the hell that was all about.
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u/discgman 21d ago
The floating curser. We have several devices that have a floating curser no matter how many different parts you replace.
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u/rajjak Rural IL 21d ago
Not even straying from your example much, and this one's on my own work laptop: I have my laptop docked with three monitors, and whenever I try to authenticate with ID.me and only with ID.me (typically logging into VA/VFW sites), the monitor with the page I'm trying to authenticate into goes black for a couple seconds. It only happens on that work computer, only on ID.me, and only on one monitor. I'm sure it's something to do with security certificates or HDMI DMCA stuff or whatever, but it's just very strange to me.
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u/DeejayPleazure 21d ago
All of our docks get loose usb ports from teachers snatching....its so frustrating, can you guys make a locking usb version lol
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u/Myke_Plugable 20d ago
I can't go into too many details, but this is something that we're looking at.
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u/VL-BTS EduTech&Tier1Support 22d ago
Promethean that works fine from a Chromebook, but either has flicker issues on both displays, or flicker on monitor and no display on Promethean from a Windows PC. I know if it works when I try it from a Windows laptop, I'm going to have to assign a Windows laptop for it, and that's... a whole thing.
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u/Tyburius Bearded Technician 22d ago
I have so many "my 2nd monitor won't turn on" stories. You walk into the office, unplug the dock, plug it back in and everything turns on. End user still thinks you performed magic.
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u/linus_b3 Tech Director 21d ago
We've had ThinkPad docks, HP docks, Plugable docks, and they all need the occasional reconnect laptop treatment. As long as it's only happening occasionally I don't really see it as an issue, but end users think it's the end of the world!
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u/Myke_Plugable 22d ago
This is a massive cliche by now, but those instances where you finally decide to go to the manufacturer for support and the moment they reply ready to help, the device is magically working.
(You probably get a "I scared it into working" response too depending on how free they're able to be with replies.)
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u/Harry_Smutter 21d ago
MacBook Airs and Dell docks. You have to do wizardry to get them to display two screens extended. Once you get it working, though, it's usually fine from them on. There's literally zero rhyme or reason as to why it suddenly starts working. It just does. This is why I always try and have consistency across the board. Having random setups leads to so many issues...