Egil Hansen

Problem: I came across a weird problem today. Windows refused to remember the display settings on a laptop (Dell Latitude D620). Whenever I booted the computer from the docking station, the external displays screen resolution would reset itself to 1280×1024, instead of the 1650×1200 I specified at last boot-up.

At first I thought it was an issue with the NVIDIA graphics driver, but it turns out it was an issue with Windows’ handling of hardware profiles.

The laptop had previously been connected to a different docking station where the connected display had been configured to 1280×1024, and Windows seemed to be remembering that setting even thought that display was not connected that docking stations anymore.

Solution: The solution turned out to be quite simple. Windows allows you to remove faulty hardware profiles. You can even copy existing hardware profiles, so you can have different hardware profiles, one for the office docking station setup and one for the home docking station setup, for example.

To manage the hardware profiles, go to the Control Panel and choose System. In the System Properties dialog box, click on the Hardware tab and then on the Hardware Profiles button. This should bring up the Hardware Profiles dialog box.

To fix the problem I had, do the following:

1. Remove the computer from the docking station and boot it up.
2. Navigate to your Hardware Profiles as described above.
   On a laptop, you should have to profiles already. They are created by Windows automatically – Undocked Profile and Docked Profile. The Undocked Profile should be the current profile, as indicated by the text “(Current)” after its name.
3. Delete the Docked Profile.
4. Click OK a few times, closing all dialog boxes, and then shutdown the computer.
5. Re-dock the computer and boot it up.
   Windows will now generate a new Docked Profile for you.
6. Configure your display settings as you like, and try restarting Windows.
   Windows should now remember the display settings correctly.

If you have different configurations on two or more docking stations, you can always copy an existing docked profile and thus have a unique docking profile for each docking station. If more docked profiles exist, Windows will ask you to choose one at boot time.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 12:54 and is filed under Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.