Troubleshooting Problems with Portable Computers

Hardware profiles are especially useful for troubleshooting problems with portable computers. You can have one hardware profile for running your portable computer when it is in the docking station, and another one for the undocked situation. When you have more than one hardware profile defined, select the one that you want to use during startup from the Hardware Profile/Configuration Recovery menu.

To set up the hardware profiles, install Windows 2000 Professional when your portable computer is docked. Windows 2000 Setup installs the network software that you need to use your docking station and creates a hardware profile called Original Configuration (Current). You can copy this hardware profile and customize the new hardware profile.

You can also use the undocked hardware profile to set a different video resolution for your portable computer. For example, the Original Configuration can have the video resolution set to 1024x768 to run on your monitor, and you can change your undocked configuration to use a resolution of 640x480 or 800x600 as appropriate.