Thinkpads Forum

I am setting up 5 new T60's each with an Advanced dock. The T60's have the X1400 video. The advanced dock has an X700 and an additional IBM branded X700 video card in the expansion slot.

Each setup will have 2 external displays for office use with extended desktops.

When I enable the display on the secondary X700 I get the parity error. I get it on successive boots unless I go safe mode and uninstall both X700s. I can then function off of a single display no problem.

If I use the IBM drivers for the X700's I get the error with even a single display attached. ATI's latest drivers allow at least the single external display.

I can also function off of the primary X700 and the laptop screen, but that is not a functional solution.

I do not see it being a hardware issue because I can replicate it on all 5 setups.

I have updated all IBM software and the BIOS is 1.09a. XP is fully patched.

I see several other posts with very similar issues with no results.

I am hoping someone has discovered a solution.

Thanks for any input,

K McKenna

I no longer regard the T60 + Advanced Dock a reliable solution for multi-monitor, despite Lenovo's touting it as the reason the dock has a PCIe slot. It's effectively statistics so far whether you can get multi-monitor running or not. Theories include power problems, bad dock batches and other issues. Lenovo does not yet acknowledge a problem with the docks.

This topic is active in the thread
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=22358
if you could post your experience there, it would help us all keep track of known good/known bad combinations, and some idea of statistics.

A couple of preliminary questions:
1) Are you in Europe, UK or US?
2) What is the FRU/Part Number of your dock?

Please cross-post to the above-mentioned thread, so that we can keep track of all information regarding this issue. Also feel free to post any dealings with Lenovo, so we can get an idea of their stance as it evolved over time.

RonS seems the local expert on the Advanced Dock.

best,

Mark
(UK, T60p, Advanced Dock, no multi-monitor joy)

I ran accross this problem after updating the ATI drivers. Appartently the new ATI drivers from IBM (through system update) causes this problem. What you want to do is use the ATI drivers that came with the machine in /IBMtools/video. It is a driver issue so just play around with different driver versions and you should be able to get it to work. It's not a hardware issue.

I am in the US.

The Dock is an advanced dock type # 2503.

I spoke with tier 1 and was quickly escalated to tier 2 support when the first guy had no idea what I was talking about.

Tier 2 mumbled that it was unsupported without using the LCD.

After that we went through Presentation director to try to setup the monitors. Received a generic error and could not continue through the wizard.

He then dropped me to do "research" and sent me an email to do all the stuff I had already tried. Suprisingly, I got the same result.

After reading the other issues in the forum, I removed the secondary X700 and connected one monitor analog and the second DVI to the primary video. I set the BIOS display option to DVI and Analog. I created a new profile in Presentation Director and it worked as both a dual display and an extended desktop.

System remained stable through multiple reboots and hot undocks.

I will be reconfiguring another system tomorrow. I will try the same setup with both cards to see what happens. I will post my results.

Thanks for the forum and for the responses.

I am currently running tripple monitors, if you are getting that error it is because of your video drivers. Try playing with different versions of the video driver and it should work.