Business Notebooks

We had a few tickets in the last week where multiple people have the same problem.

We use the HP USB-C Dock G5. The laptops that have problems are a mix of types (different models of Probook, different models of Elitebook, Dell laptops), so it's clearly the docks. Some problematic docks were placed about a month ago, some longer ago.

The problem that the people have is that all of a sudden, the keyboard stops responding and just repeatadly types the last pressed letter. (can be any letter, not specific ones)

For example, if you want to type "Today we will have a meeting", it could end up as "Today we will haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa... (endlessly repeating a's)
It will keep spamming the letter, as if the key is being pressed (which isn't the case, even with brand new keyboards that come right out of the box >> nothing is keeping the key down). Meaning that if you get stuck in Word and you open Start Menu to  try opening something else, it will immediately start spamming that letter in the search field. If any kind of area where text can be entered is active, it gets immediately filled with that same letter.

The keyboard connected to the dock completely stops working at that time: the num lock light turns off and whatever keys you press (or smash), nothing works. However, the built-in laptop keyboard does still work (num lock light is still on, and if you press keys, they appear inbetween the repeating letter)

What stops the endless loop, is unplugging the keyboard from the dock (and plugging back in after 5 seconds), or unplugging the dock from the laptop (and plugging back in). However, this doesn't solve the problem as it just comes back a few minutes later.

We tried these steps:

• look in the USB-C port on the laptop and in the USB-C cable of the dock to see if there's any dirt or damage (nothing wrong to see)
• update the driver version of the dock on the affected laptops >> didn't work
• swap the keyboard >> didn't work
• swap the dock >> sometimes works again 
  • too expensive to swap the docks in the entire company
• swap the keyboard and dock >> sometimes works again (in the case that just dock swap didn't work)
  • too expensive to swap the docks in the entire company

It is a very recent development, as we never had that before. Is it a Windows update that messes with this (if so, which one so we can undo it)? Is it a firmware problem in the dock (if so, is there a fix for it)?