Using an external monitor with a laptop in a docking station:How?

[Draeger]

I have a Dell Latitude C400 Laptop.

I've also got a Dell C Port II docking station for it.

When I slot the laptop into the docking station, everything connected to the station:- keyboard, mouse etc, works fine.

However this is my first time using a docking station with a laptop and I'm finding getting an external monitor to work a bit puzzling.

With docking stations, are you meant to boot the laptop up and with the external monitor connected and switched on, shut the lid of the laptop for the display on the external monitor to come up?. Or should you be able to use the laptop and external monitor with the laptop screen still up?.

When I boot mine up, if the screen is flipped up, I get "No video input" displayed on the external monitor. If I shut the laptop lid, the screen on the external monitor shows the laptops image, but after a minute or two Windows XP is still not useable as not all of my taskbar icons have appeared and the "egg timer" is there as the cursor as if its waiting for something else. If I reopen the laptop lid the external screen goes off.

What am I doing wrong?. I have a feeling its something simple that I'm overlooking?.

 

[Draeger]

Think I sussed it out.

Went into the laptops power management settings and changed the "When my laptops lid is closed" from "Enter Sleep mode" to "Do nothing" and the docking station and external monitor are both working fine.

Only other slight niggle I have is when I connect a pair of external speakers to the docking stations headphone socket, I get nothing, the sound still comes out of the laptop speakers.

If I connect the speakers to the actual laptops headphone socket, they work fine.

Anyone got any ideas?.

 

[Dracata]

have you tried looking at your sound settings in control panel? if no luck there, try upgrading your sound drivers - most recent sound drivers come with some sort of custom control panel where you can select the specific inputs and outputs of your ports