DisplayLink and Flex Office

[stuffie]

Hi All,

I have a question about detecting devices in a flexi working concept. In our office we are using several hundreds Philips 231P DisplayLink monitors. Every morning an employee has to search for an empty desk and connect his/her laptop to this monitor through USB.

It looks like this:

http://www.pijpenstrootje.nl/troep/FlexOffice.png

The concept works fine, except that every time a laptop connects to a monitor it has never connected to, Windows detects it and the person behind the laptop has to wait for Windows to install or configure some drivers. I think its because of some serial numbers in hardware, i dont know why exactly. What happens depends on Windows version, but on Windows 7 you see something like this:

http://www.pijpenstrootje.nl/troep/devicedrivers.png

My question is: is there something we can do to overrule or speed up this proces? All monitors, mouses and keyboards are the same.

[Wim]

Ahhh.. This is the joy of Windows update being checked whenever a "new" device is connected, even if the drivers are already installed. It can take a minute ot 2 to check Windows update before it decides that it has the latest software installed and use the already installed driver.

The best solution is to disable Windows update, but this will disable it for all hardware. This can be done by following this article:

http://www.displaylink.com/support/ticket.php?id=367

Wim

[stuffie]

Thanks, we will look into that.

What causes this exactly? Is it also possible to alter something in the monitor (hardware or software) so Windows thinks it is the same monitor?

[Wim]

It is Windows behaviour when it sees a new USB device. The monitors need unique serial numbers, otherwise you would not be able to connect more than 1 at a time to the PC.

Wim

[stuffie]

Hmm, didn't thought about that.

Some users are using Windows 8.1 which has a much faster configuration proces. They are ready within seconds. Maybe upgrading all laptops is a better idea.