Laptop Dock question

[StructuralPoke]

We just got a docking station for my wife's HP Compaq 6535b Notebook PC (XP, SP3) and the setup is as easy and obvious as expected. Here's my problem though -- when we dock the laptop, the wireless adapter turns off. This poses a problem for us as we don't have an easy way to 'wire' the dock to the modem.

If we have the laptop open, we can push the wireless button at the top to turn the wireless off, then back on and the wireless works from there, but the resolution on the external monitor switches to match the laptop - not very convenient (or pretty).

I'm sure there has to be an option somewhere to allow the wireless to stay enabled when docked, but I sure can't find it. Can anyone help me out?

 

[Slugger926]

We just got a docking station for my wife's HP Compaq 6535b Notebook PC (XP, SP3) and the setup is as easy and obvious as expected. Here's my problem though -- when we dock the laptop, the wireless adapter turns off. This poses a problem for us as we don't have an easy way to 'wire' the dock to the modem.
If we have the laptop open, we can push the wireless button at the top to turn the wireless off, then back on and the wireless works from there, but the resolution on the external monitor switches to match the laptop - not very convenient (or pretty).

I'm sure there has to be an option somewhere to allow the wireless to stay enabled when docked, but I sure can't find it. Can anyone help me out?

So you are required to keep the laptop open, and have both screens showing the same thing?

I am not sure if you have tried or seen this, but you can go into your display settings and change it two a two screen configurations where you have two screens to work with. This is very addictive to have two useful screens of different windows open. You can drag windows between the two screens. I have this setup at work, and just use the laptop on my lap in my lazyboy when at home.

 

[Dexman PE]

Yeah, if you run it in dual monitor mode you can then change the resolution for each screen independently. I've never run a dual display with a laptop before, but I've seen it done this way by several friends.

 

[StructuralPoke]

That is a good point. They were both showing the same thing, but haven't tried to set it up as a dual. Maybe I can convince the Mrs since it is her work computer.

 

[StructuralPoke]

This worked wonderfully. Seems obvious now that I look at it, but hey -- thanks!

 

[Dexman PE]

just as we fix your laptop issue, my wife's EeePC got hit with a virus. The part that sucks is that it doesn't have a CD drive so I can't run a reboot disk. THe only way I've been able to get any progress on it is to create shadow profiles and work there until the virus spreads to it...

 

[StructuralPoke]

just as we fix your laptop issue, my wife's EeePC got hit with a virus. The part that sucks is that it doesn't have a CD drive so I can't run a reboot disk. THe only way I've been able to get any progress on it is to create shadow profiles and work there until the virus spreads to it...

Ouch -- can you find something that'll boot off of a flash drive? That's all I could think of.

 

[FLBuff PE]

Or do you know someone that has an external CD drive? Our nhetbook doesn't have a CD drive, but we purchased an external one that connects via USB 2.0

 

[Dexman PE]

It wouldn't recognize the external because windows was too jacked up. I basically had to restart it and each time repeatedly pressing one of the F_ keys until I got something. F2 got into the bios, F5 allowed me to boot into safe mode, F8 changes the operating system to boot to (only had XP installed).

Basically I had to F5 into safe mode (which didn't have the virus pop-ups, but didn't have alot of other features enabled either), create a new admin user profile, use the new profile to run System Restore, then had to restore it back to January 6th. The restore eliminated the 4-5 profiles I created, returned everything back to the original profile, and so far (knock on wood) it worked. I guess the new netbooks don't come with boot CD's because they have a built-in option to boot from a partition which has the content of the CD in it. I never really found how to get in there to run it, but since the restore worked I stopped looking.