problems with Latitude E6500 / E6400 & E-Port Replicator

I am having a very similar issue.  E6400 with E-port Pro 2, Windows 7 Pro.  I can dock just fine (hot or boot up in dock), but after some time (random) the laptop freezes with no access...no keyboard, mouse, no CTRL/ALT/DEL, no activity on NICS, nothing...only a hard reboot will reset it.  Sometimes this issue is at Windows login screen...other times it is 8 hrs into the process.

I have a ticket open with Dell.  They have replaced the dock itself and the motherboard in the laptop...still the same issue.  CPU and memory are at "normal" levels...1 GB (out of the 4 installed) used and CPU at <20% at most times.  I have been monitoring temps...CPUs are normal...GPU is a bit high at times, but fluctuates...it does get hotter in the dock.

There are not significant messages in Windows event viewer. 

Dell says its a driver issue, but I have updated all that I know of.

I have disabled LPT and COM ports in Bios...

Bios is at A20 now...old motherboard was updated to A25 (recently released) with no luck.

I am getting frustrated with this...any ideas?

I am having a similar problem with my E6400 and my E/Port Plus dock. I am running Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.

In my case the laptop freezes when only when it is on the docking station. It will freeze up within about 30 min every time I put it in the dock. Out of the dock it is fine.

In doing some troubleshooting, I have found that it does not freeze up in the dock as long as I unplug my USB keyboard and USB mouse. I have now plugged in the keyboard and mouse into the USB ports that are directly on the laptop and so far no lockup.

Is anybody able to remove all of the USB devices plugged into the dock and see if the freezing stops?

Hi

Have been experiencing the same issue on my E6500 but on one or two occations re-docking has gone without a problem. Reading through all the posts, it seems to me that it is a power issue, and I also get the "visual indication" of LCD not being "brightened up" by the extra power in the dock/port replicator.

Re-docking now a few minutes ago suddenly all went fine! - and the only difference I could identify was that I accidentally graced my trackball (Kensington Expert Mouse) a second before pushing the laptop onto the Port-replicator.

Trying to recreate the setting I undocked (everything fine) and re-docked while continuously moving the trackball - no problems!! - twice!!

My hypothesis is that this is indeed a power issue and that when re-docking the port-replicator is in some sort of standby-mode, thus freezing the laptop as it gets connected to an external power source, yet no power "is present" due to a "dormant" state.

By moving the mouse around, an input (awake) signal is sent to the port-replicator and when re-docking, the laptop is powered up and recognized just fine.

Mouse is connected via USB cable, as is keyboard. Have not tried to recreate this scenario by using keyboard to "wake" port replicator, but it would be interesting to see if others have success with this method for such a annoying problem.

Best of luck!

Endre

Thanks for posting this - disabling the Integrated Webcam worked for me.  :emotion-1:

This was driving me crazy and wasting a lot of time.  I have an E6400 with XP Pro SP3.

Now will look for newer driver than the Creative drivers on Dell drivers 1.06.03.0309

I disabled the Integrated Webcam and that "fixes" the problem.  So I installed an older driver for that device and found that it solved the problem permanently.  The installed driver that was causing problem was Creative 1.6.3.309.  I downloaded from Dell Drivers the 1.2.2.603 driver and installed it and now it is not causing any shutdown problem when docked.

this is for my E-6400

Wonder if anyone has this particular nuance of the problem:

For me - it seems only to occur when I undock, connect to an external projector (like an InFocus), then later redock. If I just undock and redock later it usually (maybe always) works. When I switch screen configurations and connect to a projector in the middle, then redocking seems to usually/always freeze and require a hard shutdown.

This is an E6500, no webcam, BIOS A24.

(I have yet to try some of the suggestions in this thread, just thought I'd see if this particular crash recipe was consistent with anyone else.)

After a lot of trial and error, I finally changed my power settings in Windows... IT WORKED and my laptop hasn't locked up in about a month!!!

I have Windows 7 Professional and had to change my power settings (control panel-power options) to "High Performance"...you may have to unhide this option.

Can anyone else try on other Windows OS's and post?  It was a very frustrating problem for me, and I hope this may help others.

What finally worked for me:

Download Gigabit Ethernet driver from Intel http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18713&lang=eng .

This is Intel version 15.8.1 driver.  It shows up in network adapter properties as driver version 10.1.9.0 dated 4/27/2010. 

The latest Dell driver for this adapter is INTEL_825XX-GIGABIT-PLATFORM_A02_R278653.exe and it shows as version 10.0.6.0 dated 6/12/2009, but replacing this driver stopped the freezing.

I am having the same issue. I will get lock ups 20% of the time when I dock. M4400 with A24 BIOS.

I have also noticed that it happenes when I plug or unplug the power supply.

Has anybody else noticed this issue when plugging or unpluggin and external power brick?

We're also still having this issue.. 

In my testing the eight E6500 fasttrak units with 4GB RAM running A26 bios. I've never had any freezing issues until we ordered our docking stations for them. Then the users that undock the most started opening up support tickets on this, whether they were running the stock os, our corporate XP image or the new corporate windows 7 image. 

Recently we purchased a E6510 an the same dock and have yet to have any issues with that combo but using that dock on the E6500 causes lockups about the same amount of undock attempts.

Hi Wilser,

My problem is like yours.  Did you ever find a fix for doing a clean re-dock after connecting to an external projector?

thanks!

For windows XP the profiles are computer profiles (which devices are enabled/disabled/removed) when ad computer is docked or not. Here is an example: www.pcreview.co.uk/.../3 I made one for when the laptop is docked and one when it's not.

Thanks Nathaniel.  I'm using Windows XP.  Could you please say exactly how to set profiles for docked and undocked?  I don't see those choices in Control Panel->Power Options, so not sure how to make this fix....

Thank you.