Turning on the system with the laptop lid closed

Hi,

I’m also planning to get the universal dock and intend to use it with my laptop’s lid closed and mounted on a vertical stand. However, I’m not quite sure if the dock could support this arrangement.

Usually, laptop power switches cannot be accessed when the lid is closed. Does one have to open the laptop lid everytime to boot the system or the dock provides a convenient way without requiring the laptop lid to be opened?

Thanks for asking!

You’ll want to use your mouse or keyboard to wake the system. Whether that will work depends on the power state of the system (for example, a system fully powered off – not asleep – can’t be woken by any USB peripheral).

Windows is designed to enable USB mice and keyboards to wake the system whenever possible.

USB docking stations don’t have special wake buttons, because (since it’s also connected via USB), it wouldn’t have a special ability to wake beyond what USB keyboards and mice (or any other USB device) could do. They would succeed or fail to wake in the same cases.

If a USB mouse is having trouble waking the system, these are good resources to figure out what might be happening:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libra…

If you’d like to keep your laptop fully off (not sleeping), then cracking open the case to reach the power button will be the only way to wake it.

Hope that background helps! Let us know if you have any questions at all - we’re happy to help.

Thanks!
Bernie

Thanks Bernie for the comprehensive response!

I figured, there’s really no way a completely powered off laptop can be awaken without reaching for the power button. I tried leaving my system on standby but after a few hours, it turned off by itself. I guess I will have to tweak the power settings so it won’t turn off. Otherwise, which I’m already planning to do, is perhaps come up with a contraption of some sort that I will attach to the laptop with the lid closed so that when pushed (or pulled) will have the power button pressed. Probably not the most elegant approach but that should do it. :slight_smile:

Nonetheless, I’m still buying the dock and I don’t consider this as a deal breaker. Probably in the future though, either USB could now turn on devices (similar with wake-up on LAN) or you guys would be able to figure it out and implement on the next iteration of the dock with USB 3.0 support as well.

Wondering why USB 3.0 specifications didn’t include a “wake-up on USB” feature… Or does it?

btw, I meant “power up on USB”, not wake up because it can be done today when the system is on standby mode.

You bet. Adjusting the power settings may get you closer to what you want (e.g. allow the laptop to sleep, but not hibernate or turn off entirely by setting these to a very large number)

!](https://s3.amazonaws.com/satisfaction-production/s3_images/707705/win7-advanced-power-settings-hibernate-after_inline.PNG?1330971950)](https://s3.amazonaws.com/satisfaction-production/s3_images/707705/win7-advanced-power-settings-hibernate-after.PNG?1330971950)

Probably the reason why the USB 3.0 spec doesn’t include anything in this area, is generally USB is a simple bus with few data lines, leaving all the fancy footwork to data packets and higher level software. So a CPU needs to be on to read and understand the data, to do anything about it.

Thanks and best wishes!
Bernie