HP 120w Thunderbolt dock fan noise

[Tarmacaddress]

Hello, HP Community.

I work in a fairly large office space with around 130 employees. We have a dream to have all the employees use the same laptop (HP Elitebook 840 G5, or at least in the Elitebook 8xx series). We have deployed around 100 laptops already with various docking solutions. HP USB-C Dock G4, HP Thunderbolt dock 65w, HP USB-C Universal dock, the good old HP Ultrathin click docking and lastly we've started to like the Thunderbolt Dock 120w. But all these have been pretty much pray that it works type deal (I should say most work excellently). The latest 120w dock we've used and deployed about 50-60 units of, have worked fairly well, but we have so far had 4 units out of the 60 that have GOD AWFUL fan noise. One was so bad i couldn't stand listening to it for more than 10 minutes while troubleshooting, i can't even imagine the poor employee who sat there for a day before contacting the IT department. With the short cable that's provided theres no way we can hide the dock away to try to prevent some of the noise, but even then, in a quiet office wouldn't do much. The latest firmware update that came out in november (1.0.49.1 Rev.E) doesn't do anything for me. The amount of devices attached to the dock have nothing to say with whether or not the fan starts going, I'm sitting here now on a brand new 840G5, freshly installed Windows with only an ethernet cable connected to the dock, and the fan goes wild. And we have over 50 docks out now with 2 24'' displays connected with DP, ethernet cable, various USB devices and usually a USB-C to USB-A hub, with a dead silent dock. 

Do ANY of you have any knowledge about IF and WHEN HP will address the fan issue in these docks? My boss tried calling HP Norway and they thought we were lying when we said the dock had fan noise because they apparently didn't even know their own product uses a fan. 

I'm grateful for any info about the issue and if you're experiencing the same. 

[axman2019]

Same issue here.  Fan noise from Thunderbolt G2 dock that has nothing to do with the activity level of the system or dock.

Running latest firmware and drivers.

HP please help!

[User9999]

I had the same problem, just returned the product. There are postings all over regarding this issue. It just baffles me that HP has no response for this issue.

[Tarmacaddress]

Just noticed a new firmware update released January 10th 2019 (1.0.52.1 Rev.A).

And who would have thought, no fix!! HP please help us. I've actually dismantled 2 docks, one without the fan issue and one with, i saw no difference inside. I'm tempted to just disconnect the fan and see what happens, because I'm lost.

 One one the docking stations with fan

[Bob_Nudd]

I think I have the same or similar issue. I noted that some people had this and others did not and having owned an intermittent HP dock before I bought 3 of these with the plan to keep one which did not have the fan issue.

All three have the same issue.

The issue I see is not that the fan is particularly noisy, the fan of the laptop is louder so you don't notice it when working but the fan stays on when the laptop has been shut down.

do you guys experience this issue? is this the same issue you are facing?

HP, Any response to these messages pls....

[Tarmacaddress]

Yes, we also have this issue on every dock that has the fan issue. Even with the laptop turned completely off, as long as the thunderbolt cable is connected, the fan on the DOCK will keep spinning seemingly indefinite. 

[axman2019]

The latest driver update after my initial posting seems to be Apr 24, 2019 / 1.0.57.1 Rev.A:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-thunderbolt-dock/20075223/model/20075224

or

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-thunderbolt-dock-g2-with-combo-cable/21816261

I was getting "Device driver missing Firmware cannot be installed for Thunderbolt Controller." when trying to install the latest drivers.

In order to get it to work, I had to extract the folder and install the Thunderbolt driver by itself first, then run the update.

(e.g. run C:\SWSetup\SP95855\Firmware\Intel\ThuderboltUpdaterDevice, then C:\SWSetup\SP95855\HPFirmwareInstaller)

Even after that, the USB type C Firmware in HP FirmwareInstaller would not update for me from 3.3 -> 3.6/3.4

To update the USB type C Firmware I had to run:

C:\SWSetup\SP95855\Firmware\Cypress\Dependency\Ssytem_Update and pull out the Thunderbolt cable and plug it back in every time it said: "DMC disconnected, waiting for re-connecting DMC".  Scary!

After all that hassle, I still hear fan noise.

[hfeb]

 I just unplugged the fan, and it is working. I don't know for how long, but I was throwing it out anyway.