OS 12.1 turned my USB docking station into a partial brick....

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OS 12.1 turned my USB docking station into a partial brick....

I was on 12.0 no problems, I update this past weekend to 12.1. One reboot after the 12.1 update my USBC Kensington SD4700P loses the hardwired gigabit ethernet port, and the ability to read my external USBC hard drive. (which is also connected into the dock) The only things that still work are the basic USB ports for keyboard and mouse, and its still keeping the laptop charged up.

If I plug the hard drive directly into the USBC on the macbook pro its instantly recognized and works as expected.

If I use a usbc based hardwire ethernet adapter directly on the macbook no problems. Even on the dock if the ethernet cable is plugged in lights are blinking but its not recognized by the OS.

This is 100% due to a bug in the OS 12.1 update.

Hardware is a Macbook Pro 15", 2019

Posted on Jan 6, 2022 6:12 AM

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Answer 1

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A_Kal Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 6, 2022 8:13 AM in response to lllaass

I tried safe mode and that didn't work.

I did manage to find a solution seconds ago but this is very strange. Please keep in mind all of my hardware sits on a high shelf, no children or pets in the home, the dock and its attachments do not move ever. The odds of downlink cable having physical damage is near zero. I even went as far as trying the kensington provided downlink cable with my wife's dock and windows PC. 100% good, the downlink cable is not the issue. It supported 2 4k monitors, hardwired gigabit ethernet etc. She has a similar Windows PC setup to my mac setup.

I was looking around on some other forums and found something about OS 12.x getting very particular about the USB3.1 downlink cable (cable that goes from the dock to the mac). As sort of a last ditch effort, I removed the downlink cable that came with the kensington, (that one that tested fine only moments prior with my wife's setup), and swapped out for the apple supplied out of the box USBC mac power supply cable. My hardwired ethernet came back to life, as did my external hard drive that was plugged into the dock.

My only conclusion at this point is that the other forum was right, and OS 12.x wants a USB 3.1 cable (even though the dock is 3.0) and will mistakenly judge a proper USB 3.0 cable as a USB2 cable. I wish I was making this up, never seen anything like this before.

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Answer 2

lllaass

Level 10

210,513 points

Jan 6, 2022 7:18 AM in response to A_Kal

Try booting to Safe Mode. That boot up takes minutes and clears caches and other thing. If it works in Safe Mode that means something is loading during a normal boot that is causing the problem. That is when EtreCheck comes in.

How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

Also, alot of times just boot to Safe Mode followed by normal boot resolves problems

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Answer 3

Jan 6, 2022 6:25 AM in response to A_Kal

Or... there is something else involved, as is usual the case.

I recommend that you run Etrecheck and post its report here. We may find something.

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OS 12.1 turned my USB docking station into a partial brick....

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