Docking

A docking station is a notebook computer accessory that can conveniently attach more hardware to the notebook.

Few usage tips

Automatic synchronization of files. If you would like to synchronize your files between your laptop notebook, your office desktop, and your home computer you should follow as given below:

1. Connect your office desktop to a docking station.
2. Connect your home desktop to a docking station.
3. Create a Briefcase in your office desktop.
4. Create a Briefcase in your home desktop.
5. Keep all the files on your notebook.
6. Connect your notebook to the docking station of your office desktop.
7. Drag all the documents from your notebook to the Briefcase in your office desktop.
8. Connect your notebook to the docking station of your home desktop.
9. Drag all the documents from your notebook to the Briefcase in your home desktop.
10. Now, each time you connect your notebook to any of the docking stations, the Briefcase on the office or home desktop automatically synchronizes the files.

Creating hardware profiles. Since the hardware of your laptop is different and the hardware that you have docked via the docking station is different, you need two separate hardware profiles in your laptop, namely, Docked and Undocked. The docked hardware profile enumerates all the hardware that you have docked via the docking station, whereas the Undocked hardware profile enumerates the hardware of your notebook only. Follow the steps below to create the two hardware profiles:

1. Right click My Computer icon.
2. Click Properties and click Hardware Profiles.
3. Click Original Configuration and click Rename.
4. Type DOCKED and click OK.
5. Highlight the word DOCKED and click Copy.
6. In the Copy dialog box, type UNDOCKED.
7. Now two hardware profile options, DOCKED and UNDOCKED are created for your laptop.
8. Now you can add hardware like VGA, Sound cards, keyboards, mouse, scanners, printers, digital cameras, camcorders, etc., to the Docked hardware profile as per your needs.
9. When you want to use the docked peripherals, simply switch your laptop to the "Docked" hardware profile mode and connect with all the docked peripherals.
10. When you have finished your work and saved it in your hard disk, simply take your laptop from the docking station, set the hardware profile to "Undocked" to access all the features of your laptop.

Creating a Second Undocked configuration. Sometimes you may require a second, undocked configuration for your notebook computer, for example, one configuration has a printer whereas the other does not have it. To create a second, undocked configuration, follow these steps:

1. Go in the selected configuration that you want.
2. Click the right mouse button and click the My Computer icon.
3. Click Properties, and then click the Configuration tab.
4. Now select the undocked configuration and give it a unique name, to make easy identification possible.
5. Now go to Device Manager and click Refresh. This refreshes the device manager list. It will re-enumerate all the hardware devices that are present on your system and will build a new configuration.