TwinView option disabled in Nvidia-Settings

I am trying to configure dual monitors on my Ubuntu hardy however the 'Twinview' option is disabled in my settings. To enable this option you would have to tweak the 'xorg.conf' file. First of make a backup of the current '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' so you can always revert to this copy. Here are the instructions to modify the file to enable 'Twinview'

- sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
- Search for line which says "Twinview" "0". Change the "0" to "1"
- sudo nvidia-settings (now the nvidia driver should automatically detect the second connected screen)

In looking online I also see this option however it did not work for me:

- nvidia-xconfig --twinview
and restarting your X server.

There is a nice article on configuring twinview on the NVidia site: http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-9755/README/appendix-g.html

Wicd won't automatically connect to wireless network

I have been using Wicd on my Ubuntu for quite a while and never really bothered as to why it would not automatically connect to a specified network. Wicd provides an option to specify whether to automatically connect to a network. I finally figured out. You need to add Wicd to your system startup services for it to automatically connect. Here are the steps to do that:

To get the tray icon to automatically appear at boot, go to System > Preferences > Sessions. In the "Startup Programs" tab, click the "New" button. Give it a name ("Wicd" works fine). For the command, enter "/opt/wicd/tray.py"

Ubuntu: Installing NVidia video driver

I have a Dell Latitude D630 laptop with a NVidia Quadro NVS 135M video card. I recently struggled with installing the driver for this baby on Ubuntu 8.04. I will detail the various solutions I tried and finally the one that worked for me. I have always had issues with this driver however the desire to install the Awant window manager propelled me to deal with this issue. Awant requires that advanced desktop effects be enabled which in turn required a 3D compatible video card. I previously manually modified the xorg.conf to deal with the driver issues but it won't work when I enabled the restricted driver for this card.

The first solution is to simply enable the restricted driver and check if it works for you. Basically under System --> Administration --> Hardware Drivers. My issue was that resolution detection just won't work. Even if I manually chose the card type and monitor type the resolution would default to 800x600. This pointed me to reinstall the packages involved

sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-restricted-modules-$uname -r} nvidia-glx-new

Re-enable the driver after doing the above step and it still won't detect my resolution. One of the sites suggested using the 'nvidia-xconfig' to generate the 'xorg.conf' and tweak it further via the 'nvidia-settings' util

sudo nvidia-xconfig --> this creates a new xorg.conf file
sudo nvidia-settings --> this is used to tweak the settings

The settings won't show my resolution options as the driver was not correctly installed.

So I looked at some other options and came across this article around installing a proprietary driver downloaded from NVidia site. You can download the latest driver from here:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

Here are the instructions to install this driver:

For the driver to install the XServer must be stopped.

cntrl + alt + backspace
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
sudo sh {installed driver}
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

I did a restart and upon boot up fired the 'nvidia-settings' on terminal which gave me the options to set the resolution. Hope it helps!!!!

Error installing windows security updates on upgrade from Windows XP Home to Professional

So I recently upgraded my windows XP Home version to Professional in need of IIS web
server. XP Home does now allow IIS installation (there are various hacks mentioned
on websites but I could not make it to work). The issue was that my windows automatic updates which were working totally fine before the upgrade, started erroring out after the upgrade. The updates were getting downloaded however they won't install. I had a queue of over 90 updates to be installed. The error on the installation screen was unhelpful just saying "Updates were not installed". My further analysis pointed me to the "windows update log file".

C:\WINDOWS\WindowsUpdate.log

To access the log file easily do:
Click Start > Run...
Type/paste %windir%\windowsupdate.log in the "Open:" field
Click OK

So in my logs I found this error (see below for stack trace). Re-Register the Windows Update dll files and that did the trick.

Run the following on command prompt:

regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wuweb.dll
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wups2.dll
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wups.dll
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wucltui.dll
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wuaueng1.dll
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wuaueng.dll
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wuapi.dll

The windows update will automatically restart after a while and shows up the queued updates in system tray. Works from there.

Stacktrace
2008-07-09 22:18:22:703 3812 a78 Misc =========== Logging initialized (build: 7.0.6000.381, tz: -0700) ===========
2008-07-09 22:18:22:703 3812 a78 Misc = Process: C:\WINDOWS\system32\wuauclt.exe
2008-07-09 22:18:22:703 3812 a78 AUClnt FATAL: Error: 0x80004002. wuauclt handler: failed to spawn COM server
2008-07-09 22:18:22:718 1248 8c0 Handler FATAL: 0x80004002: ERROR: Remote update handler container process created (PID: 3812), but exited before signaling event
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 8c0 Agent * WARNING: Exit code = 0x80004002
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 8c0 Agent *********
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 8c0 Agent ** END ** Agent: Installing updates [CallerId = AutomaticUpdates]
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 e5c AU >>## RESUMED ## AU: Installing update [UpdateId = {707E6500-81C1-4165-8C43-631E09891716}]
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 8c0 Agent *************
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 e5c AU # WARNING: Install skipped
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 8c0 Agent WARNING: WU client failed installing updates with error 0x800040022008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 e5c AU >>## RESUMED ## AU: Installing update [UpdateId = {DD167F04-69E8-46A0-83DA-D4A5143EDBF1}]
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 e5c AU # WARNING: Install skipped
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 e5c AU >>## RESUMED ## AU: Installing update [UpdateId = {7CB0B704-B2FF-4D5C-B202-B5BA340B7007}]
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 e5c AU # WARNING: Install skipped
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 e5c AU >>## RESUMED ## AU: Installing update [UpdateId = {73F11106-7351-465D-9BA5-2881436C0D5A}]
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 e5c AU # WARNING: Install skipped
2008-07-09 22:18:25:906 1248 e5c AU >>## RESUMED ## AU: Installing update [UpdateId = {383B0108-D3E2-4F2A-9E32-7B7B599BB0F7}]