Very Bizarre Problem - Direct3d crashes when laptop is docked

[duritz]

My machine is doing something extremely strange and I was hoping someone here could help.

If it is not docked everything works fine. All my games work fine. My desktop looks normal. Everything is hunky dory.

Now this is the strange part that started happening yesterday... Every time I dock my laptop, my video goes kaput. My desktop icons lose their transparency. My Microsoft Office programs go to what looks like 16 bit color mode. Worst of all Direct3d crashes and I am unable to play old games like Diablo 2 that rely on Direct3d.

As soon as I press the undock button on my docking station, everything goes back to being fine and dandy......

I tried 3 different docking stations... I even unplugged everything from the docking station... It seems as soon as the laptop detects it is docked it just goes to hell and as soon as it realizes it is undocked (even if it is still sitting on the docking station) everything goes back to operating normally.

I have downloaded the latest drivers from lenovo's site and it did not help my problem. I downloaded the latest ATI drivers from their website and modded them with mobility modder and that did not have any effect either.

It is so weird because I can still run Diablo 2 in window mode but if I try to run it in full screen it crashes. I can even run it in full screen before docking and as soon as it docks the video disappears but the sound stays. If I press the undock button the video will come back. It's BIZARRE!

I took a video with my digicam (sorry for the low quality) and upped it just to visually express what is going on. http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=2m2eu0i&s=4

Basically I docked it and you can see the screen flicker and then the background on the desktop icon text appears. I run dxdiag and try to test display and it errors out (Test failed at step 8 - Creating 3D device - Out of memory)

I then leave it docked, press the eject button, and the signal is sent to undock the computer. The screen flickers again and the desktop icon text is transparent again showing hardware acceleration is back on. I run another DX test and it works beautifully.

Could anyone make any sense out of this please? I could try re-rolling my machine but I won't have access to do that until Monday and I'm not even sure if that will fix it... :-/

 

[duritz]

can no one help?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: duritz
I downloaded the latest ATI drivers from their website and modded them with mobility modder and that did not have any effect either.

Can you enlighten us as to how that works? Will it allow the newest Radeon driver package to work on my Xpress 200M chipset laptop?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: duritz
Basically I docked it and you can see the screen flicker and then the background on the desktop icon text appears. I run dxdiag and try to test display and it errors out (Test failed at step 8 - Creating 3D device - Out of memory)

I then leave it docked, press the eject button, and the signal is sent to undock the computer. The screen flickers again and the desktop icon text is transparent again showing hardware acceleration is back on. I run another DX test and it works beautifully.

Could anyone make any sense out of this please? I could try re-rolling my machine but I won't have access to do that until Monday and I'm not even sure if that will fix it... :-/

It sounds like the PCI bridge in the docking station is reserving a certain address range that is cutting into your video memory and severely limiting it.
Ask bsobel, he might know more about specific issues with Windows Plug-n-play and how it works when docking. I know that Windows does some hardware resource rebalancing.

 

[duritz]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: duritz
I downloaded the latest ATI drivers from their website and modded them with mobility modder and that did not have any effect either.

Can you enlighten us as to how that works? Will it allow the newest Radeon driver package to work on my Xpress 200M chipset laptop?

well it only works with certain video cards but yes in a nutshell you download the exe from ati, run the installer extract it into C:\AMD\firegl_8_453_1_xp32_063073 (or wherever it goes for you) then you run mobility modder and point it to that directory with the extracted files. then you run the setup in that folder and install like normal.

http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php is the url for it with a good description

 

[duritz]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: duritz
Basically I docked it and you can see the screen flicker and then the background on the desktop icon text appears. I run dxdiag and try to test display and it errors out (Test failed at step 8 - Creating 3D device - Out of memory)

I then leave it docked, press the eject button, and the signal is sent to undock the computer. The screen flickers again and the desktop icon text is transparent again showing hardware acceleration is back on. I run another DX test and it works beautifully.

Could anyone make any sense out of this please? I could try re-rolling my machine but I won't have access to do that until Monday and I'm not even sure if that will fix it... :-/

It sounds like the PCI bridge in the docking station is reserving a certain address range that is cutting into your video memory and severely limiting it.
Ask bsobel, he might know more about specific issues with Windows Plug-n-play and how it works when docking. I know that Windows does some hardware resource rebalancing.

i'm not sure who bsobel is. does he frequent these boards?