A bit of a firmware downgrade story:
Lenovo Thinkpad Universal USB-C dock firmware issue with AMD-based E-series laptops.
Issue arises when users or admins upgrade the dock to the .91 version using Vantage, Dock manager, or manually with a downloaded executable.
I can attest to seeing a working dock have the following issue after the upgrade from a previous version.
The primary issue with the 3.0.91 firmware is that any displays attached to the USB-C dock will fail to work with these AMD systems. In several cases, with multiple generations of the E15 we saw this happen.
Running the updater will give errors, mostly that it can not read the current version of the various hardware revisions, and it will eventually fail.
Other laptops will work with the dock, both Windows and macOS alike. The dock is usable for USB, ethernet, and audio, but video will be non-responsive and not shown as available.
Resolution:
Firmware downgrade!
Using this recent Reddit thread I was able to get the 3.0.80 firmware from Lenovo.
Using a Dell laptop with USB-C I was able to successfully install the previous firmware version and downgrade to 3.0.80. All functions return and the dock is completely usable.
I’ve done this without issue on 4 of the 40AY USB-C docks and all devices which were not previously working are now operating properly.
Update – 01/08/24
Lenovo has since released the 3.0.92 firmware update for these docks and I can confirm that it avoids this issue. One dock that had been downgraded was successfully upgraded from .80 to .92 and all functionality worked. Another was a recent .91 firmware install that I was unaware of, a successful downgrade, and then an upgrade to .92.
Reddit thread: