Dell Latitude E5450 and Dell E-Port K07A

Question

I have a Dell Latitude E5450 that I connect to a Dell E-Port mode K07A. When I dock the laptop the rear USB ports on the laptop are disabled as documented on Dell's support pages. My question is...

I keep a wired USB mouse connected to one of the back USB (2.0?) ports and USB Headset (Plantronics Blackwire C520) connected to the side USB ports (3.0?).

On occasion, when I undock and redock, the mouse takes forever to become enabled and the headset usually doesn't ever come back until I reboot.

When I undock, the speaker icon in my system tray (Windows 7) shows muted, which is what I want. However, when I dock, the headset remains muted and will not unmute until I reboot the laptop. If I manually unmute the speaker icon, it turns the internal speakers from the laptop on.

Any suggestions on how to fix these 2 issues?

thanks, Jeremy

Answer 1

We use a similar setup and I haven't had these kinds of issues, but have had issues that are fixed with firmware updates. The sound issues sound similar to what I have also seen that involved the Audio driver software.

Make sure you update all the drivers and firmware.

Latest Laptop BIOS: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/drivers/driversdetails?driverId=51TN6&fileId=3691043874&osCode=W764&productCode=latitude-e5450-laptop&languageCode=en&categoryId=BI

Latest MST HUB Firmware Update: (Do this one with the laptop docked) https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=MK1GG

The above 2 are the critical ones.

You probably also want to make sure all the rest of your drivers are up to date. The easiest way to do this is probably to use Dell Command Update: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/drivers/driversdetails?driverId=X79N4

I have a feeling this will take care of your issues.