Hot Docking

Question

System :

Latitude C840

C-Port II Docking Station

I get the following error when trying to undock the computer.

"You cannot eject your computer because the service 'Hardlock' which controls one of the devices in the docking station, does not support Plug and Play and cannot be stopped. Contact the manufacture of the driver for an update"

Apparently it will only "cold dock", what requires a reboot of the pc.

I've tried in failsafe mode and that resulted in exactly the same error, just with "vga card" instead of "hardlock" as the device that not supported plug'n play.

Any hints for my problem ?

chemitalic · Answer

No response after 24 hours :smileysad: If you guys can't help me, can you redirect me to a forum that will ? My client is killing me, because I can't fix this very weird problem.   By the way the OS on the Latitude is Windows XP Pro SP2, not suprising to anyone of course.

JersWork · Answer

Well, I used to have a Latitude C840 (my wife has it now) and I was able to (and she is able to) "undock" (the system does a suspend first of course), and "hot dock" (plug into the docking station while running) and it all worked properly for me, and does work properly for her.

I am not familiar with this "Hardlock" service you mention or the devices it controls. I do know that I did have troubles with undocking when I had a certain Firewire PCI card in the C-Dock II station, but other than that, it worked as expected. Have you researched the "Hardlock" service to see what it is controlling? I bet once you determine what that it, and remove it (or at least disable it) you should be able to undock without shutting down first. In spending a few minutes searching the web for "hardlock" I was able to determine that the most likely candidate is that something installed on the system installed an older "hardlock.sys" file and updating that file (or disabling it if not needed) should resolve the problem. It is possible that some software installed a Windows 2000 HARDLOCK.SYS file on the XP system. Find the offending software/hardware and uninstall it and you should be able to get the needed suspend funcitonality back...

chapmasj · Answer

The cause is most likely to be a missing or damaged driver. See if you can find out from your client if anything has been changed recently (i.e. since this problem started).  It might give you a clue to what to try first, otherwise you may need to systematically check everything. Message Edited by chapmasj on 09-11-2005 10:40 PM

chemitalic · Answer

Hey   I think the hardlock service has something to do with a lpt dongle. This couldn't hold us back so we deactivated the lpt port in the docked profile and uninstalled all programs associated with the dongle.   I think this will do it. We havent tested it yet, 'caus my client is outta the house.   If you look back to my thread, you will see I also ran into a problem with the 'Vga Card'. Same error message as the hardlock, this was of course in failsafe mode, where the standard driver is loaded, and the docking station might require a real driver for hot docking, which is loaded in normal mode.   So until my client returns, I gotta think about if this vga card problem is easy solved by simply starting up with the correct driver. No problem then. But if the error message also appears in normal mode, I'm doomed.   Can anyone tell me if its possible to hot dock their laptop in a C-port II in failsafe mode ? Or if its impossible without the right driver ?   I'll report right back as soon, as I get this tested on the Latitude.   You been a great help so far ThX =)

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Hot Docking

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