MSP 13 Thunderbolt Ports Not Working

[Immitem]

Hello there. A month ago I got my hands on a MSP 13 and immediately fell in love, a vast upgrade over my i5 Surface Pro 2017.

Everything was going fine until about a couple of weeks ago when I sorta noticed that it took a while after booting for my Startech USB C dongle and USB C external SSD to be noticed by the O.S. Nothing I found concerning as my Dell laptop sometimes is finicky with its own Thunderbolt ports and I sometimes have to unplug and replug things for windows to notice.

Unfortunately last week it got worse as my external SSD kept disconnecting and reconnecting. This all came to a head earlier this week when nothing I plugged into the thunderbolt ports was acknowledged by windows. Furthermore, the light on both devices would not turn on showing that they were not receiving any power. It did not matter if the tablet was plugged in or not.

Weirdly enough, the middle port that the power cord plugs into works perfectly fine and everything I plug into it, even a Cintiq Pro 16, is instantly connected and works immediately.

I pray that this is not a hardware issue as I have updated all drivers, installed all Windows updates, reset the BIOS to optimum defaults (just in case), and even reset W10 to factory default to no avail. Before I reset Windows I would open the Thunderbolt desktop center and it would not report any devices attached as well as the Thunderbolt controller not showing up in device manager. After resetting Windows the application will not even open anymore, nothing happens, and the Thunderbolt controller still does not show up in device manager.

Does anyone have any suggestions before I RMA?

THANKS!