Strange problem of T43 + Dock

[Fishingsnow]

Hello, I have a T43 2668 for almost 3 years and I bought a dock 2877 last summer but I am encountering strange problems now.

The laptop works well on the dock as long as I don't remove it from the dock (either on or off). Whenever I take it off and plug it back, the system will:

1 Not power on. The screen stops at the IBM welcome logo and will not come to XP.
2 If it starts, no USB devices can be found. All USB devices connected to the laptop directly will work but all those connected to the dock will disappear like there is no usb ports on the dock at all.

My only solution is to remove the laptop again from the dock, remove the battery from the laptop, remove power cord from the dock. And repeat it until some time they all work well. After that, the windows system will hang randomly when typing keyboard or moving the mouse. And generally after two of such hanging up, everything comes well...

I don't know if any one has a similar problem like mine. I tried to remove all USB devices from the dock but it will not help. Any comments will be appreciated a lot...

[richk]

First, look in the event log for any driver errors.

[davidspalding]

Welcome to the forums.

What kind of USB devices? I have no such problems, but there are some devices (like drives) which need to be "shut down" by Windows prior to disconnection. Hit FN+F9 (EasyEject) and see if there's anything that ought to be removed from USB before you un-dock.

Is the 2877 the Port Replicator? (No such number appears on my spares.) My Minidock says 2878....

For my experience, I usually have no problems undocking from a Port Rep, MiniDock or Dock II (I have all three) if the only things connected are mousies or keyboards. But MP3 players, flash drives, other things, I EasyEject first.

[Tim M]

Welcome to the forums.

What kind of USB devices? I have no such problems, but there are some devices (like drives) which need to be "shut down" by Windows prior to disconnection. Hit FN+F9 (EasyEject) and see if there's anything that ought to be removed from USB before you un-dock.

Is the 2877 the Port Replicator? (No such number appears on my spares.) My Minidock says 2878....

For my experience, I usually have no problems undocking from a Port Rep, MiniDock or Dock II (I have all three) if the only things connected are mousies or keyboards. But MP3 players, flash drives, other things, I EasyEject first.

I just received a Dock II ($35 instead of $399!) for my T42(p). I too have the issue that when docking/undocking, the dock's USB hub sometimes will stop working. It seems to be solved by suspending the computer and then resuming.

I also had an issue with the screen going black, forcing a reboot. Part of this seems to be that I have a bit of trouble clicking the laptop into the dock, so there is intermittent contact with the connector, which may "confuse" things.

[Tim M]

I now cannot get the USB hub in the Dock II to work reliably. I've tried rebooting, power cycling, unplugging the devices (scanner, printer) and then rebooting, etc. I do notice that if I shut down while plugged into the dock, the Windows dialog box indicating an app has stopped responding and has to be shut down pops up with a program named "EzEj...", which seems to be the EasyEject utility.

Is the dock faulty or am I suffering from some driver issue? I have gotten the dock's USB hub to work, though that seemed to require a magical combination of power cycling and suspend/wake cycling to get to work.

Thoughts? Is the Dock II just this flaky?

EDIT: I power cycled the dock and then cycled the computer in and out of standby, and got the hub to work again. The flakiness is a bit annoying, but at least the dock isn't broken. I'm guessing some sort of driver problem?