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Hey, thank you SO MUCH for

Ryan — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:37:45 -0400

Hey, thank you SO MUCH for posting this detailed information. I was experiencing the exact same problems. I have a Dell Latitude D630 with nVidia Quadro NVS 135m video card and was trying to use the PNY Quadro NVS 280 PCI card in the d/dock. Blue screens of death all over the place. Finally I left my latpop monitor off, hooked up an LCD to the VGA port and installed the drivers that way. Rebooted, and it worked! I then tried hooking it up to DVI like you did, and it still worked. Then I tried using my laptop monitor and 2 external monitors and it continued to work still.

It looks like as long as I didn't get a blue screen during the driver installtion, the drivers and graphics card works. Weird. I'm going to do some more testing and if I find anything else out, I'll let everyone know.

Dell was able to replicate

Wiseguy — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:18:46 -0400

Dell was able to replicate the problem and found that the additional video card will not work on WinXP with 4GB of RAM, however it works fine with 3GB. They also loaned me an extra harddrive and caddy to test various operating systems (thanks to my MSDN subscription). Here were my results:

M90 in docking station with Nvidia Quadro NVS 55/280 PCI:
• Windows XP 32 bit: works with 3GB, Insufficient resources with 4GB
• Windows XP 64 bit: works with 3GB, Insufficient resources with 4GB
• Windows Vista 32 bit: Unknown (haven't tried this one and needed to return harddrive)
• Windows Vista 64 bit: works 2GB, 3GB, and 4GB

Considering that it works with Vista, I am satisfied that this is not a shortcoming of the Dell M90 or the docking station. I am very pleased with Dell's tech response as they have worked with me through this. Since I have duplicate setups of the docking station and video cards at work an home, I will most likely stay at 3GB and continue to use the PCI card expansion. The majority of my clients and coworkers are on XP, and I'm not sure of the consequences of running 32bit apps on my Vista 64 machine or devloping new apps for XP32 on a Vista 64. I was only getting 262KB of that 4th GB of RAM, and I hate to give any of it up, but...Oh, well. I'm sure I have a coworker who will be happy to add my lost GB to their machine. If I was stepping into this new and was aware of all of this ahead of time, I'd probably buy the UV Plus+ (UV 16) from EVGA or only purchased 3GB or RAM instead of 4. I hope someone finds this useful and can avoid uselessly spending money as they push their laptop boundaries.

Impressive mod, Kevin! I'm not familiar w/ the specs on the M65, but if you're already on Vista, I'd check on running a 64bit installation on it. Otherwise, I hope 3GB works for you.

I also have the problem with

Kevin Timmerman — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:17:07 -0400

I also have the problem with 4 GB RAM. A few things in device manager complain of not enough resources. Works fine with 2 GB, have not yet tried 3 GB. Please keep us informed of Dell's response.

I used a ATI HD2400 card because it has a current generation chip (Vista, DX10) and supports dual link DVI (required by 30" monitors). The D/Dock required some modification to provide room for the large heat sink. I have posted a few pictures here: http://www.notebookforums.com/thread217971.html

Here's the current status on

Wiseguy — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:42:58 -0400

Here's the current status on my issue w/ losing my docking station PCI card when upgrading from 2GB to 4GB.

After following several different suggestions, I shipped my Video card and driver disk to Dell for them to test with. They are still working the issue. I have to say, they have been very good at keeping in touch via email and responding in no less than 2 days at the latest.

On another note, I have been successful in adding a 3rd monitor using a USB 2.0 VGA Display Port from EVGA. Using their UV Plus+ (UV 16 model), I am able to add a DVI connection w/ 1680 x 1200 resolution which works well with my 20" Widescreen LCD with 2GB and 4GB configurations on WinXP SP2. I haven't noticed any degradation in Video performance, but this is not a gaming machine, so your experience may be less satisfying than mine. At just under a hundred dollars, this may be a good alternative for those who do not wish to purchase a docking station and video card.

I'll continue to keep you informed on Dell's response.

Thanks, Wiseguy...I (we)

Steve Seymour — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:09:29 -0400

Thanks, Wiseguy...I (we) really appreciate it. Anything you can update us with can help others avoid a totally annoying and painful situation in the future.

Strange, too, what you're experiencing. I'm never surprised with such things, though. Never.

I thought I'd keep you

Wiseguy — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:49:44 -0400

I thought I'd keep you informed of my progress:
I failed to mention in my original message that I had the (A07) BIOS set to OnBoard Video, which worked fine w/ 2GB memory for pushing 3 external monitors (2 17s + 1 20 wide) in addition to the laptop display.

Dell opened a case and sent me a two 2GB replacement sticks to verify that I didn't have bad memory. Unfortunately, it wasn't that simple. The 2 new memory sticks results were the same message for the Docking Station Video Card.

"The device cannot find enough resources that it can use (Code 12). If you want to use this device, you will need to disable one of the other devices on this system.

I'm returning the replacement memory back to Dell and await word for next attempts. I'll post any new findings as they occur.

Thanks for the reply Steve.

Nick — Wed, 28 May 2008 05:27:09 -0400

Thanks for the reply Steve. I've now logged a call with Dell support on the off chance that they'll come up with a solution too.

Reading through the Dell forums yesterday it seems there is an alternative card that works in the D Dock, an ATI one. I guess this might have been a better choice as there is less chance of a driver conflict.

I've confirmed the file that was causing my blue screens was nvlddmkm.sys, so it's definitely the driver. A quick Google on that file name has brought up a lot of hits, so I'm going to start going through those.

Nick

Damn, Nick, I'm sorry to

Steve Seymour — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:31:01 -0400

Damn, Nick, I'm sorry to hear you're having problems with Vista. I did buy the extra Vista hard drive as I mentioned I would above, and though I've installed Vista on it I haven't made time to install all my software on it--and so it is going unused at the moment. Consequently, I haven't yet run it off the D-Dock, so I'm not sure if it will work for me or not. Your post is depressing for me in that regard, but when I do give it a shot I'll let you know here.

I assume you've installed all the latest drivers and BIOS, right?

This really drives me nuts. Why all the problems with multiple monitors in the year 2008???

Good luck, Nick, and if you get it straightened out please let us know how.

Great write up,

Nick — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:13:43 -0400

Great write up, unfortunately so far my experience hasn't been successful... I ahve the Precision M4300 with the Quadro FX 360M and to add more video I've added a Quadro NVS 280 to the D Dock.

Unfortunately after a few hours messing around, I've failed to get it working. On first boot I got nothing so I changed the video card priority in the BIOS to be laptop video first. This let me boot into Windows and Vista started installing the drivers for the new PCI video card. This is where the problems started. Shortly after the drivers were being installed the system blue screened with the following error:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

The two files mentioned looked to be the ones that had just been installed. Using the system restore I got the system working again, but trying the whole process again gave the same result. I changed the onboard video to use VGA instead of DIV and the two monitors on the NVS 280 fired into life and Vista booted. However, the monitor attached directly to the D Dock didn't intialise. Looking at Device Manager I can see that Vista has stopped the onboard video due to a problem. I tried to remove the device to allow it to re-install but this brought the same BSOD as above.

I've posted on the Dell forums with the hope that there may be an answer. I'm sure it's driver related and I might try XP if I get round to getting a spare HDD.

Nick

Great write up! I also have

Wiseguy — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:44:53 -0400

Great write up! I also have a M90 with an internal NVIDIA Quadro FX 2500M, a docking station w/ a NVIDIA Quadro NVS 55/280 PCI running a total of 3 external monitors in addition to my laptop display. However, when attempting to upgrade from 2GB of memory to 4GB, I lose my external docking station PCI card due to insufficient resources. Ironically, by adding memory, I lose resources...

The extra memory does show up as 3.4 GB (the 32 bit chipset impact on total memory in this "supposedly 64 bit" machine has been fully discussed in other forums).

I can definitely use the extra memory for my Virtual machines, but do not want to sacrifice my displays. Can anyone verify that they are running an M90 w and additional video card w/ 4GB of memory? If so, please post which video card you added to your system.

Thanks,
Wiseguy

Has anyone successfully done

Justin325 — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:49:43 -0400

Has anyone successfully done this with Vista?

the equipment:
D830 with NVS 140M
D/Dock with NVS 280

the span:
Laptop screen + external LCD + external LCD?

How would this be set up? 1 DVI from D/dock and the other DVI from the NVS280? or both external monitor from the 280 DVI?

No you cannot do that, the

Dave — Sat, 10 May 2008 10:29:22 -0400

No you cannot do that, the internal laptop card only runs 2 monitors max. It can be one external and the laptop's own LCD, or two externals, but not all three. You would need to add a PCI video card in the dock.

Awesome write up. Here's my

Justin325 — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:03:05 -0400

Awesome write up. Here's my question:
I have a D830 (w/NVS 140M) with the D/Dock station.
I want to run (when docked). The laptop LCD and 2 additional monitors. 20" and 19"
So my span would be:
Laptop LCD(1650X1080) + 20" LCD(1600X1200) + 19" LCD(1280X1024).
Can I do this without an extra PCI video adapter in the D/Dock? The D/Dock had a DVI and VGA port.

Anybody try to use 3

Bob — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:24:21 -0400

Anybody try to use 3 monitors with a Dell D830 docking station, but with nothing but DVI connections? I'd like to power 3 Dell 2408 monitors at native resolution (1920x1220), but using DVI connections everywhere. This is the same setup as Steve, except where Steve used 3 VGA ports (2 card based, 1 docking station based), I'd like to use DVI ports (2 card based, 1 docking station based).

Matrox offers two low profile graphics boards, the P690 Plus and the P650, both of which can achieve 1920x1200 resolution via DVI ports. So that woud take care of two monitorrs.

What I don't know is whether the DVI port on the docking station will work with the Matrox cards - can all three monitors run at the same time, or will I see BSOD's like Steve saw?

Here is a link of an

Dave — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:07:06 -0400

Here is a link of an obligatory picture of the setup for those of you who are wondering what a setup like this might look like:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3252769#post3252769