Necessary to shutdown before docking/removing from dock? (E6400)

That's very odd. We have about 15 (out of 22) E6500's that are docked most of the day and none of them have a fan or heat issue. They run surprisingly cool.

In fact I'm typing on one that's docked and has been running for the last 11 hrs. Lots of apps open including VMware workstation running a VM. CPU temp shows 32c and the fan hasn't buged from low (inaudible) mode. P9500 2.53GHz with LED onboard Intel x4500 IGP.

 

Thanks. I'll try reseating again and see what happens.

 

That is exactly the same situation I have seen here with one of our user's E6400 when she first got it. I've told her to make sure all running applications are shutdown before she redocks and the problem seems to have gone away. I have a feeling it's some MS application getting flaky when it sees a network connection again and disables the wireless.

 

E6400 Hot Undock Issue:

Symptoms: The user tries to hot undock by pressing the undock button on the docking station. The laptop is removed and the screen is opened. No display comes up, it's just black. The user is forced to hard reboot. This happens in a dual view (2 screen) environment.

Solution: Ensure the user’s workstation is setup properly and the hot undock feature will work.
o 2 DVI Cables or 2 VGA Cables are being used. Don’t mix and match.
o Ensure that the Video Out from the Docking station matches the setup on the desktop display settings. (for example, Monitor 1 matches Cable output 1 and Monitor 2 matches cable output 2)

 

I have the same problem, but the solution doesn't apply. Anyone else having this issue?

 

Same problem here, are you suggesting that swapping my monitors both physically and in software (so netto nothing changes) could resolve the problem?

 

I'm running WinXP 32 on a new e6400.

If I undock at work (network/LAN) and go home (wireless network) and open my laptop, it does not detect that I am connected on my wireless home network. The network icon says connected, with 'excellent' signal etc, however if I open a browser, it says it cannot locate the website.

If I restart the machine, all works fine. I don't want to have to do a hard shutdown/start each time I go from work to home.

I sorely miss the "Undock" option on my old D600/WinXP32 because it seemed to handle this scenario flawlessly. Now, the assumption is that the e6400 doesn't need an undock feature where you tell it to undock (instead of just hotundocking), but I could argue that it still does...

Unless someone has a tip for why this undocking scenario doesn't work??

 

Actually, the lack of an undock (or eject) option on the Latitude E6400 is quite serious.

Even if you close all the files on your computer before ejecting, the system does a lot of work in background.

With docks that support an undock option, the OS is told about the undock operation and shuts down external devices attached to the dock (disk drives, monitors, etc). If the OS isn't told about the eject, file writes could be interrupted causing data corruption.

As it happens, I talked to Dell support (SMB division) and was told that their engineering department is aware of the issue and is working on an updated BIOS that will provide the functionality.

Obviously they won't be able to update the existing Docking stations for the E series, but the eject pc option should be available in Windows.

 

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