D/Dock PCI Video question Multiple Monitor XP

I had to go out and purchase a different video card and it worked fine.  I ended up using a Radeon 7000.  The lower end card didn't support the ATI control panel.

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It worked for a while.....but

 

I was successfully able to use the Lattitude D600 in a 3-screen configuration (laptop and 2 monitors) with a D/Dock for about 3 months without issue.

 

About a month ago when I try to boot into the configuration all of the screens are black although there seems to be Disk activity. I am using a ATI RADEON 7000 in my D/Dock. How can I get my configuration back?

 

A coworker just tried to do the same thing with his new Latitude D610 a D/DOCK and an ATI RADEON 9250 card and is getting the same thing. It appears that the machine is working, but the displays across all of the screens are blank.

 

If you eject the laptop from the D/dock, the XP logon screen is there, but for some reason, the D/dock does not like the video card. 

 

We are going to try this configuration with a Nvidia card and see if we have better results, but so far we have not had much luck.

you wrote:

was successfully able to use the Lattitude D600 in a 3-screen configuration (laptop and 2 monitors) with a D/Dock for about 3 months without issue.

About a month ago when I try to boot into the configuration all of the screens are black although there seems to be Disk activity. I am using a ATI RADEON 7000 in my D/Dock. How can I get my configuration back?

A coworker just tried to do the same thing with his new Latitude D610 a D/DOCK and an ATI RADEON 9250 card and is getting the same thing. It appears that the machine is working, but the displays across all of the screens are blank.

If you eject the laptop from the D/dock, the XP logon screen is there, but for some reason, the D/dock does not like the video card. 

We are going to try this configuration with a Nvidia card and see if we have better results, but so far we have not had much luck.

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Have you had success with the NVidia ?. I am trying to use a NVIDIA FX5200 PCI Card in C-Dock II to run a new Dell  2005FPW display. My LTOP is Dell Latitude C840 (AO13 Bios). I have disabled the C840 integrated Video card (nvidia GEforce4 440 Go) via control panel/system/devices. Sometimes the System Tray recongnises the PCI card, sometimes not. It's like the system forgets the last powered up profile.   But in any case I can NEVER get any display on the screen of the 2005FPW using the VGA connector, or the DVI input.  I get text message on the screen         "1:D-SUB CANNOT DISPLAY THIS MODE"  Tech support not able to help me so far.  I can get a display if I use the C-DockII Video output connector with the C840 integrated video card enabled. But it is doesn't have the best resolution for a Wide Panel Display, which is why I'm trying to use an external PCI video card. I have updated every applicable driver I can find.  I'd be interested to hear if you fixed your problem how you did it. thanks .

Update- I'm beginning to see the light.  I tried my new NVIDIA FX5200 in a desktop PC with Win98 but Alas! the power supply doesn't have enough beef so it shut down. My Card vendor (MadDog ) specifies must have 250 Watt P.S. in the PC. I called their Tech Support to find out exact current draw, but they don't know and don't have access to their engineers to find out.   So I think the main problem is current draw and since the C-Dock only has a 90Watt power brick  I'm going to see if powering the fan on the FX5200 from a separate source will ease the current draw. 

 A separate question for a DELL Tech\GURU (if any are listening!) would be if a higher wattage brick  could be used to power the C-Dock. I can't imagine the FX5200 drawing anything more than 5 Watts.

I tried an old Trident PCI card in my C-Dock II -but it won't run in XP. So an alternate would be to buy the cheapest Graphics PCI card that will, and try installing it in the Cdock. .

I'll post my progress.  

Further Update I did verify that the FX5200 is functioning in an older Desk PC with Win 98 and it drives the 2005FPW LCD display although only in VGA mode as the CPU is a Pentium 1. The cooling fan on the card draws about 70mA at 12V.  But some searching on the web is indicating that the card draws around 70 watts all by itself. So I think the Cdock 90 watt supply won't be enough.   Only solution would be to mount the card on a PCI bus extender card that would allow power connections from an external supply.  That seems like too much trouble.   It would be easier for me to buy a desktop (probably not a you-know-who!!) and synchronize or LAN with the Latitude c840 on a daily basis or use a common USB HD to share data into the C840.  So unless I can find a cheap lo end PCI video card that will run under WinXP I will not travel down this yellow brick road much longer.  Thanks for everyone's input.

Update. Some success. !. Using a Matrox Milleneum II 2D/3D 8MB PCI Graphics card in the Dell C-DockII top PCI slot.  The on-board Latitude Laptop C840 built in video card NVIDIA GeForce4-440 64MB is disabled via the Windows XP control panel systems device. I am able to obtain a nice analog display with the Dell 2005 FPW 20 inch LCD Monitor connected to the VGA connector of the Matrox.  The Windows display control panel is indicating a resolution of 1600 x 1024 true color 32bit 60Hz.  I am using big fonts of 120 dpi.  I'm not sure why I can't see a choice of 1920 x 1080 available as the Matrox is supposed to be able to produce that with 8MB of Memory on the card. 

 

I then enabled the onboard C840 Nvidia 440 Video card and I can now identify and adjust the C840 Laptop LCD display, and the 2005FPW display. A 3rd display shows up in the Display Control panel which would be the one driven by the C-dockII  VGA port, but I don’t have another display to connect to that.  I am able to spread the desktop over from the LCD to the 2005FPW. 

When I have a proper desktop available I will check the original MadDog FX5200 PCI card (see earlier post) to make sure it really is functional and not DOA.  

Hope this helps someone.