ACPI Laptop Computer Hangs When Docked with Display Blanked

When you dock an Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) laptop computer with the screen blanked in power-saving mode, the computer may stop responding (hang).

When you dock a laptop computer the appropriate hardware profile must be applied, which requires that the configuration manager re-enumerate all devices. During this operation, the configuration manager causes a WM_DEVICECHANGE message broadcast to all programs and device drivers.

Some S3-compatible video drivers may issue a Video Electronics Standards Association-compliant (VESA-compliant) BIOS interrupt 10h for video hardware control. When the video hardware is in an S3 sleep state (low wake-up latency), it may return unexpected values to BIOS input/output (I/O) probes, which can cause the BIOS in some computers to hang in an endless loop.

To work around this behavior, return the display to normal before docking the computer by moving the mouse, or by providing other input.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.