Sunday rant: I have a 2016 Dell XPS (high-end) laptop. I bought a Dell 25" 4K monitor. And on Friday received a Dell Thunderbolt dock for the monitor. I plug it all together and although the monitor displays wonderfully, the dock is not passing USB through. So I start fiddling around with "unplug from dock, plug into laptop, confirm the peripheral is working," stuff. And then the laptop BSODs. Machine boots, connects to dock, everything's fine for 30 seconds, BSOD. Start to Google. "Update your laptop BIOS." (For a fucking docking station!). It takes a goddamn hour to find the BIOS update on the Dell Website for their goddamn flagship laptop, but whatever.
Still BSODs. Now it's telling me that I have to update the firmware on the dock. But I cannot update the firmware because if I attach the dock to the laptop to update it, it BSODs. So, there's this few-second window before the BSOD where I see that I have to update my Thunderbolt Driver on the laptop.
So I download the driver and run the installer for the Thunderbolt Driver. The installer doesn't give any option other than "Uninstall." So I say "OK, I'll uninstall and reinstall." I uninstall. Fine. I go to reinstall. I'm told I don't have sufficient permission. So I run as administrator. I still don't have sufficient permission. So I end up editing the registery to turn off user protection. (Remember, this is all for a docking station).
I now can run the "install" option, but it refuses to continue because it sees some pre-existing value in the registry. (Which I take to mean it's "Uninstall" function didn't actually, you know, uninstall.) It then rolls back the Thunderbolt install and leaves me with my current situation:
A half-upgraded machine with user access protection turned off, less functionality than it had before, and it still BSODs whenever I turn on the dock. All with a respected company's flagship hardware.
God.