when you try to use your Dell XPS laptop as the first of three monitors at a docking station and it periodically goes black

Right-click in the desktop at Windows 10 and pick "Display settings" and then go to "Power & sleep" at the left nav like so:

At the upper right of this screen you will see "Additional Power Settings" which should be clicked. Then you should click "Change plan settings" and after that "Change advanced power settings" to get a dialog box like so:

Turn off: Link State Power Management

 
 

Addendum 6/8/2017: What is above is all wrong. All you have to do is install the latest drivers to fix this problem.

 
 

Addendum 6/9/2017: As it turns out, the drivers didn't help either. I don't know what to do about this problem.

 
 

Addendum 6/28/2017: This turned out to be a really tough problem to solve. We are guessing that it is some sort of collision between a Dell XPS laptop and a Dell K17A001 dock. The problem is unique. A tech support call to Dell revealed that no one else had reported up the problem as of yet. The problem was "solved" by setting the laptop display to sleep in lieu of a do nothing default state. It's not going to sleep while I'm using it obviously. That "fixed" the issue. The sleep setting doesn't have the gremlin the other setting had.