Unable to Undock

[TCM1024]

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad X61 tablet notebook and Vista Home Premium. I believe my problems started when connecting a USB external hard drive to my Vista system. Here are the scenarios I'm now observing:

Scenario 1 - Already booted laptop inserted into docking station: The DVD drive in the ultrabase docking station is recognized and usable. However, I'm unable to undock from the docking station because it says "ATA Channel 0" is in use by another program. This after I've shut down all running programs. Laptop must be ShutDown to cleanly undock laptop from docking station.

Scenario 2 - Boot up the laptop while in docking station: The DVD drive is now no longer defined and can not be accessed. Laptop can still not be undocked because of same "ATA Channel 0" issue. Shutdown frequently hangs with this scenario and must be manually powered off. This is observed even without opening any programs after the machine finishes booting up.

I'm unsure about what this "ATA Channel 0" device is that seems to be causing me fits with the docking station?

I would appreciate any help.

Thanks.

- Tim

[dweis]

I have a similar problem. In the docking station, I've no dvd but a secondary hard drive. It is always recognized but I can never undock because I have the same error :-/

[eng518]

This might be worth a try.

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/04/0 ... -churning/

[dweis]

I don't think it's related to it. Because Windows search is already disabled and when I try to undock, the secondary hard drive is sleeping and it is just woken up (I can hear the noise) by the undocking process...

[timendres]

I have seen this problem on my X31 laptop running XP. So it is not a Vista problem, and it is not X61Tablet specific. And I get almost the exact same message: IDE 0 device in use. Forcing the undock (by ignoring the message and just ripping the machine from the dock) has varying degrees of success, but often results in an immediate reboot without warning or BSOD.

I believe that something "low level", like a driver, is grabbing access to the drive in the bay, and the usual procedure is unable to stop that process/driver. I have not had time to see if the problem occurs when there is nothing in the bay.