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MBP 2019 - external monitors loosing connection

grmlin

grmlin

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 16, 2015
1,110
777
Hi all,
as this forum was such a great help in the past, I'll ask you for help again.

We replaced my aging mid 14 MBP with a 15" 2019 MBP, 8 cores, 32GB ram, nice machine.

I use it in the office and at home connected to external monitors:
- using the Caldigit dock and Display Port cable in the office
- using a USB-C to HDMI adapter at home

both monitors are 4k, both worked perfectly on my old MBP. The new MBP worked fine, too. Until yesterday.

Then I had issues with the Macbook loosing connection to the monitors. I first thought the Caldigit dock is bugging out, but today the same thing happened with a cable plugged into the Macbook directly. It feels like the cable is plugged in and out over and over again.

The machine is only a few weeks old and it's very weird. My old Macbook was slow, but this never happened.

Is this a known bug or something? Or is it more likely to be a hardware defect.

Thanks a lot!
 
TB3 cables tend to loose their connection, that's why OWC sells a small rubber device that helps keep them snug inside devices...but it won't work with the port on your Mac. You might want to go talk to Apple Care, tell them your ports are loose and you keep loosing connection.
 
I tried different ports with different cables, and it didn't happen before yesterday. Sounds unlikely to me. And I can't reproduce it, it happened randomly. :/
 
Hmm..I had that Caldigit Dock, found it to be very unreliable. I sent it back and forth with them over and over. They said it was my Alexa, then they said it was my WIFI Router being too close... they sent me an insulated one. I finally got a dock from OWC and have been stable since. However I read that this happens when plugged directly in? did you try different cables?
 
Yeah, these are different cables. Caldigit is in the office, at home it's plugged in directly... I'll keep an eye on it. Thanks for the help!
 
it happened today with a different port, on the other side, yes.
 
When you're using the dock and the display disconnects, do other things attached to the dock also disconnect (e.g. a good test would be a USB flash drive - if it disconnects macOS will throw up a warning notification about it, which won't go away until you specifically dismiss it).

I'd contact Apple support about it, if you want to do more troubleshooting first, the usual steps are


Also, I forgot to ask before, how regularly does it disconnect and is it under certain repeatable conditions (i.e. a slight movement of the laptop/cable) or randomly?
 
It happened a few time. Not anymore since I created this thread

I’ll rum hardware diagnostics. That’s a good idea, thanks. And if it happens regularly again in the future I’ll show up in the store.
 
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