Docking/Undocking: Screen Resolution & Blank Screen

Question

I have a Precision M70 running the latest NVIDIA drivers available on the Dell site. It has BIOS A03. I have a problem with undocking that started a while ago (wasn't there initially) and it is getting very annoying. I will describe the steps I take that lead to my blank screen and the only workaround I have at the moment.
-laptop is attached to docking station and I shutdown, not hibernate or sleep.
-once power goes off I undock the laptop.
-turn on laptop disconnected from docking station
-I see the XP logo flash on screen as always then the screen goes blank. The hard drive continues to go for a minute or so then stops.
- I press Fn+F8 (one, twice, …) and nothing happens.
- I close the lid on my laptop wait a few seconds, then re-open the lid.
- Miraculously the screen properly displays the 1920x1200 resolution of the laptop screen.
- All works well after this.
- If I power down and reconnect to the docking station it works fine.

The problem seems to be going from the docking station to standalone, not the other way around. The result is the same whether I hot undock or cold undock. Has anyone else seen this and come up with a resolution? It's a pretty poor workaround to have to open/close the lid everytime I disconnect from the docking station.

Thank You

hoyakoni · Answer

this might be a reed swtitch problem, you might need to check if the reed awith is defective or not, you can do that by powering the system up (undocked) using battery only, if the system does not show any video, try check on the lock led lights, (num lock, caps lock, scroll lock) if the num lock and scroll lock lights up at the same time and then shutsdown, you reed switch might be defective

wpilgri · Answer

Running on battery the video works fine. It is only the first time after being shutdown in the docking station then removed that it is a problem. The first time after coming out the the docking station I get the blank screen that I can fix with the close/open lid trick. To summarize, it only seems to happen when the video resolution forced to change. For example, in the docking station in runs 1280x1024 and when I try to start it the first time out of the docking station it is switching to 1920x1200 and I have a problem. Once in the 1920 mode (running on battery or the power supply but not docked) I can shutdown, hibernate, etc and it always works fine. Only switching video resolutions seems to cause problems

Locked Topics – Laptops General

Docking/Undocking: Screen Resolution & Blank Screen

Was this post helpful?