Dell E5400 Latitudes with Windows 7 Enterprise and docking station fun

[Duke5A]

Is anyone else having issues with Windows 7 and docking stations? The majority of our staff uses E5400s with docks, external keyboards/mice, and an external monitor. Windows, or rather the Intel display driver, gets confused at times as to what display to use and I run into situations where it'll disable the external, or the internal. Other times it'll be on the dock sleeping, and when you press the power button to wake it up, the external screen will come on like it should and then goes right back to power saving mode. It basically wakes up for a split second, Windows sees the lid is still closed, and goes back to sleep. It's almost as if it doesn't recognize that it's docked. The only way to get it back to normal is to undock it, open the lid, shutdown, close the lid, and then place it back onto the dock. Other times USB devices plugged into the dock won't even work (I think this problem is related to the sleep problem).

 

This entire thing is just driving me nuts as we just pushed everyone onto Windows 7 Enterprise over the summer. I've got enough on plate with the migration as it is without goofy things like this happening. As always, thanks in advance for the help guys; this forum has made my life a lot easier.

[Duke5A]

Well, I've been playing around with this and it seems to be partially users' fault. Users will open the lid while it's on the docking station so when the internal display comes Windows now sees three monitors in total (DVI external, TV, and the internal to the laptop). Depending what is set as primary at the time will cause different things to happen. Most of the time the internal on laptop gets disabled, and will even stay disabled once it is pulled off the dock. Even the power issues with not being able to wake the machine up while it's on the deck seem to be because of this. The users that follow these instructions don't have any further issues: never open the lid while the laptop is on the dock, never dock it with the lid open, and wait for it to go to sleep (power LED will pulsate) before placing it on the dock.

[psydii]

Check for BIOS/Firmware and Driver updates. Sometimes these things are firmware bugs. (I have some tosh R-series machines that didn't always behave consistantly until a recent update)