T60p and Parallel Port Driver

[whquaint]

With help from a guy on another forum, I finally figured out what is causing my Standby and Hibernate commands to completely disappear from my T60p. There is a conflict between my T60p and the driver called SSIPDDP. I think this is installed for a parallel port hardware lock I need for a certain piece of engineering software (PSS/E from PTI).

The T60p itself does not have a parallel port, but the dock does. When docked, the Standby and Hibernate commands were available. They disappeared when undocked. If I disable the SSIPDDP driver (Device Manager, View, Show hidden devices) and reboot, then the Standby and Hibernate commands don't ever disappear. Of course now I can't use that parallel port hardware lock. Luckily I was able to get a USB version.

This software and parallel port lock have always worked fine on T4x series ThinkPads, which leads me to blame Lenovo for this problem.

[RonS]

FYI - you can also get a Parallel/Serial port that fits inside the Thinkpad's slim bay.

[whquaint]

Thanks for the reply. That's a possibility, although if Lenovo's mini-dock parallel port doesn't work with this device, I don't know that I want to gamble that their ultrabay parallel port will work with it.

[whquaint]

I've been going back and forth with the company (SafeNet) that supplies the Sentinel hardware locks for the engineering software I use. They now have a T60p in house, and just today they sent me an update to help fix the problem with BSOD when undocking. We'll see if it works.

I was glad to see so much discussion of BSODs in my poll http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=42190

I was glad to see that I am not the only person getting BSODs on T60's, although no one mentioned my specific problem with parallel port hardware locks.

I don't know why that thread was locked. It seems that some people are highly protective of ThinkPads and sensitive to ThinkPad criticism.

[gator]

I don't know why that thread was locked. It seems that some people are highly protective of ThinkPads and sensitive to ThinkPad criticism.

That is not the case. People here actually welcome criticism, because it helps you learn a lot of stuff about thinkpads.

I was the person who said that the poll was very vague ... and that was probably the biggest the reason why it was locked. Having een here around for a while, I've noticed that polls get good information if they are precise and address some specific issue. As a long term windows user, you should be knowing that BSODs come about for a large number of reasons (though XP is very stable now, and we don't see too many BSODs) and a poll asking people about the number of BSODs on their T60 won't help much - simply because not all BSODs are the same.

I really aprpeciate your posting the solution to your problem, please continue to participate here. I am sorry if my post offended you earlier.

ps: one more reason why that thread was locked was probably that there were some ugly arguements going on, and mods don't like it much.

[whquaint]

Well, me and other people in the thread thought it WAS valuable. I can see closing down a thread/poll because of bad language, porn, stuff like that. This was basically snuffing out speech for no good reason.

Put another way, what's the worst thing that would happen if it were left open? Certain people would be unhappy about it? What's the best thing if it were left open? Some of us felt like we WERE getting valuable information. Different people posted about the different kinds of BSODs they got. Where else can you get an overview of various types of BSODs seen on T60's?

A general pole like that taken on many different types of computers might just show some trends. We'll never know unless it is done.

Each person has his/her own definition and opinion of value. It is not an absolute fact.

There are obviously different types of forum monitors, some more hands off only dealing with serious problems (e.g. ArsTechnica.com), and others more Draconian and micromanaging (e.g. thinkpads.com).

[gator]

There are obviously different types of forum monitors, some more hands off only dealing with serious problems (e.g. ArsTechnica.com), and others more Draconian and micromanaging (e.g. thinkpads.com).

I don't want to start an arguement, but I think this is one of the best moderated forums out there. The Mods are very experienced people and though at times, they apprear strict, they have a valid reason for closing/locking posts. I have never seen a more civil forum anywhere. As you say, each to our opinion. But whatever you think, the wealth of knowledge on this forum is immense.

[carbon_unit]

I don't know why that thread was locked. It seems that some people are highly protective of ThinkPads and sensitive to ThinkPad criticism.

It was becoming a cat fight. It got locked. Don't start fighting in this one or it will get locked too. Keep it civil.

[whquaint]

There were ultimately two symptoms that I saw in my T60p: BSOD and the missing Standby/Hibernate. The missing Standby/Hibernate were fixed by downloading the newest SuperPro dongle drivers from the SafeNet website. To fix the BSODs, they actually sent me a special patch that runs at every bootup. Not elegant, but I haven't had any of these problems in days.

The bad thing is that I now have a super slowdown that I can't figure out. It started before I installed the bootup patch. It probably was caused by all the tinkering I had to do.

Now that the main problem seems to be solved, I think I will wipe the HD and reimage it. When I first got the T60p, my engineering software ran about 2x as fast as the T41p. Now it is about 1/2 speed or less. I can live with it that way.