Thinkpads Forum

Our firm has a number of Lenovo T60's that are docks in the Lenovo mini dock. Our usb ports(on the dock only) randomly stop functioning. The ones on the laptop work fine at all time. Majority of our power adapters are 65 watts. Although some of the folks that were having the issues had 90 watt adapters. I have updated drivers, tried different registry tweaks/fixes but still have the same issue.

When this issue occurs either I reboot for it to be temporarily resolved as the issue is pretty random when it comes to occurences or double click safely remove hardware in the systray for the usb to come back to life. I have checked power settings to find nothing related, our machines do not hibernate. From what I have noticed the bios is v2.07 from July 2007. I have attempted to replicate the issue with the same bios version and image with no luck.

I dont know if this is another clue or not but when I unplug the power from the dock the usb ports on the dock turn off.

Please help, thank you all.

Isn't the power from the dock also powering some of the ports on the dock (i.e. the USB ports). So I would think losing the USB ports on the dock would be because of the loss of power from unplugging the power from the dock. As for why it drops randomly, I am clueless.

Are they all the Advanced Mini-Dock? I thought those came with 90-watt power adapters. It's possible those 65-watts aren't giving the USB ports enough power, but it doesn't make much sense for the ones with the 90-watt adapters. Maybe those are faulty? I don't know.

mateyo wrote:Isn't the power from the dock also powering some of the ports on the dock (i.e. the USB ports). So I would think losing the USB ports on the dock would be because of the loss of power from unplugging the power from the dock. As for why it drops randomly, I am clueless.

Are they all the Advanced Mini-Dock? I thought those came with 90-watt power adapters. It's possible those 65-watts aren't giving the USB ports enough power, but it doesn't make much sense for the ones with the 90-watt adapters. Maybe those are faulty? I don't know.

Yes, they are all minidocks. The user we have witht he most issues has a 90watt adapter. We are just as clueless to why the ports on the dock would randomly just quit. I also checked the system hardware and saw no change when they were disconnected from when connected.

Thanks again!

What kind of devices are they using in the dock USB ports?

Most USB ports have resettable fuses to protect the system. An opened fuse will reset when you reboot the dock. Since the dock and computer may have different fuse manufacturers, they may behave differently.

Try a different device of the same function.

The only device we have pluged into the USB on the dock is a Olympus DS-4000 that plugs into a cradle which plugs into the dock usb. The cradle is powered seperately. So I do not believe there is any drain. The Olympus is the only device we use on usb. All of the users are using the laptop keyboard and touchpad.

I've seen a similar sort of thing with an X60 and external touch-screen. It was as if the touch screen just stopped woring now and again.
It turned out that windows was shutting down the usb ports as there was no "traffic", the solution was to set USB in bios to always on and not allow windows to shut the ports down in device manager.

andyP wrote:I've seen a similar sort of thing with an X60 and external touch-screen. It was as if the touch screen just stopped woring now and again.
It turned out that windows was shutting down the usb ports as there was no "traffic", the solution was to set USB in bios to always on and not allow windows to shut the ports down in device manager.

We looked for an option like that in the BIOS and could not find one, perhaps I am not looking in the right place?

For my Nikon, there are two modes in the cameras, Nikon mode and storage device mode. I normally set it to storage device mode. May be Olympus has the same settings?

Same goes for the direct camera to USB printer function. Only one of the modes work.

Did not see any settings on the Olypmus, although it works as a mass storage device when plugged in.

aahmad wrote: We looked for an option like that in the BIOS and could not find one, perhaps I am not looking in the right place?

I admit I don't have a T60 to look at, it should be in Config - usb - usb always on.
I've also just checked back about which TP had this problem and found it was an X61 and not X60, it maybe that this option isn't available on *60 series.

Unfortunately, I just found the usb setup in the bios and the only option is USB BIOS Support but nothing about always on. Perhaps I should just throw these machines into the recycle bin

Are these XP or Vista machines? For Vista machines, there is some kind of Registry Patch for USB S3 poer management.

These are XP machines running on SP 2

Have you checked the Advanced or Power Management tabs of the Universal Serial Bus Controllers portion of the Device Manager? Maybe the setting for allow computer to turn off this device to save power is checked and isn't working properly. Try un-checking and testing it out.

mateyo wrote:Have you checked the Advanced or Power Management tabs of the Universal Serial Bus Controllers portion of the Device Manager? Maybe the setting for allow computer to turn off this device to save power is checked and isn't working properly. Try un-checking and testing it out.

Good idea, but unfortunately I could not find anything regarding power management for usb in device manager(maybe I missed it). Under the usb controllers there were a few tabs but nothing for power. thanks!

Weird so if you do Start > Right click "My Computer" > Properties > Hardware > Device Manager > Expand "Universal Serial Bus controllers" > Right click one of the "USB Root Hub" > "Power Management"

It doesn't have the "Power Management" tab?

I'm not sure which of the USB Root Hub entires are designated to the dock's USB's (if at all), but I would say make note of each USB Root Hub's setting and uncheck all the ones that have "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power."

we've had a similar issue with our T60s with logitech mice. The mouse suddenly shuts off until you unplug it and plug it back into another dock USB port. We eventually started telling employees just to plug them in to the side of the laptop itself, which seemed to solve it.. but is pretty annoying for people who take their laptop home every night and sort of defeats the purpose of a dock.

We're using the advanced mini docks across the entire line, and most if not all of them only have a keyboard and mouse plugged into the USB ports.

USB Root hub is for the ports on the laptop itself. The Generic USB Hub is the docking station, which no power settings are available and it states the hub is self powered. 500 mA per port.

Aside from the same option located in the Power Manager.. I'm fresh out of ideas, sorry...

Sorry for bumping an old thread.

It appears there was a major design flaw with the T60 docking station. I dealt with Lenovo on this exact issue about 6 months ago.

The tech acknowledged there was a problem that caused the USB ports to quit working intermittently, but would would provide any remedy as the 1 year warranty had expired.

I suggest you get the docks replaced with Lenovo's newest revision if you are still under warranty.