Docking station / laptop set-up connects to monitor inconsistently on boot-up or wake-up

[belgrano]

I run my HP laptop on an HP docking station connected to an LG monitor, and when my computer boots up or wakes up from sleep, about 50% of the time I have trouble connecting to the monitor. Here are some of the forms that takes:

- Monitor does not power up.

- Monitor powers on but does not find any input and then powers down.

- Monitor powers up and shows a gray screen.

- Monitor powers up and shows video from the computer momentarily, but then goes black, and repeats this cycle multiple times.

I can always fix the situation by doing some combination of unplugging the docking station from the laptop and plugging it back in, and opening the lid of the laptop and closing it again, but sometimes it takes multiple repetitions.  I've tried both HDMI and DisplayPort to connect the monitor to the docking station, and that doesn't affect the problem. Any advice? Thanks in advance!

My computer is an HP ProBook x360 436 G7 (AMD Ryzen 4300 APU 3.7 Ghz) running Windows 10 Home 64. The docking station is an HP USB-C Dock G5, and the monitor is an LG 27UK500-B.

[banhien]

@belgrano 

I do not have problem, may be I only use FHD monitors (I'm using 2 monitors right now and connecting the dock to a Thunderbolt™ 3 port). Please update firmware for the dock using

          https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-usb-c-dock-g5/27767205

Hope this helps.

Regards.

[belgrano · Accepted solution]

Thanks for suggestion to update the dock firmware. I did so, but it did not appear to fix the problem.

Here's what did fix the problem: at the suggestion of someone on another forum, I updated my computer's BIOS. Immediately after the BIOS installation finished I also updated my display adapter driver. The monitor connectivity problem was solved after that. (I do not know whether it was the BIOS update or the driver update that was responsible for fixing the problem - I wish I had waited and observed the system for several reboot cycles in between the two so I could tell which it was.)

After I already fixed the problem, I got a good suggestion of an additional diagnostic step I could have taken, and I will pass it on here for other readers. The suggestion was to try plugging the external monitor directly to my laptop's HDMI port. That would have helped determine whether or not the dock was part of the problem.