ATI Video Drivers for Radeon Mobility X1400

I recently re-purposed my old 17" laptop (read: desktop replacement) by Velcroing it to the underside of the kitchen cabinets. When I did this, the laptop screen had to open down instead of up -- meaning that the screen was now upside-down. Piece of cake to fix, just select the "rotate screen 180*" button in the ATI software, right? Negative.

It turns out that Windows XP Service Pack 3 broke the ATI software. Because I wasn't using this feature at the time, I missed out on all of this drama -- as well as the opportunity to download the updated device drivers. Now the device drivers (if they ever did exist) are buried in some archive that I can't get to or find after hours of Googling. I could find many drivers for the ATI cards, and even the ATI Radeon Mobility cards, and even the ATI Radeon Mobility X(number) cards -- but not the X1400.

I think this is because Dell and Lenovo (and probably other OEMs) packaged this card with their PCs and didn't want people downloading device drivers from ATI that would cause problems because they would have to field the tech support calls. Which is what this ATI site confirms.

Anyway, I searched and searched and couldn't find any drivers, until I found this:

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/modtool.php

That's right, someone actually wrote a tool to modify the ATI drivers so they would work with other cards. Now I can download the drivers meant for the 22 other models and they will work with my card, which is conveniently left out of the list.

And it works! I now have a laptop working with an upside-down screen!

Posting Code Snippets on Blogger

As you can see by my previous post, I figured out how to post code snippets on Blogger.com.

Thanks to this site: http://alexgorbatchev.com/SyntaxHighlighter

and to Google Sites for hosting the files: http://sites.google.com

Resynchronizing Windows Update

I had a problem with Windows Update not synchronizing correctly and leaving all of my WSUS managed clients sitting at 99% all of the time. I found this handy .vbs script to get me out of the jam:

Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set objAutomaticUpdates = CreateObject("Microsoft.Update.AutoUpdate")
objAutomaticUpdates.EnableService
objAutomaticUpdates.DetectNow

Set objSession = CreateObject("Microsoft.Update.Session")
Set objSearcher = objSession.CreateUpdateSearcher()
Set objResults = objSearcher.Search("IsInstalled=0 and Type='Software'")
Set colUpdates = objResults.Updates

Set objUpdatesToDownload = CreateObject("Microsoft.Update.UpdateColl")
intUpdateCount = 0
For i = 0 to colUpdates.Count - 1
 intUpdateCount = intUpdateCount + 1
 Set objUpdate = colUpdates.Item(i)
 objUpdatesToDownload.Add(objUpdate)
Next

If intUpdateCount = 0 Then
 WScript.Quit
Else
 Set objDownloader = objSession.CreateUpdateDownloader()
 objDownloader.Updates = objUpdatesToDownload
 objDownloader.Download()

 Set objInstaller = objSession.CreateUpdateInstaller()
 objInstaller.Updates = objUpdatesToDownload
 Set installationResult = objInstaller.Install()
  
 Set objSysInfo = CreateObject("Microsoft.Update.SystemInfo")
 If objSysInfo.RebootRequired Then
  Set objWMIService = GetObject _
  ("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate(Shutdown)}!\\localhost\root\cimv2")
  Set colOperatingSystems = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
  ("Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem")
  For Each objOperatingSystem in colOperatingSystems
   objOperatingSystem.Reboot()
  Next
 End If
End If

Windows Update Service Missing

Fix: Download the Windows Update Agent and force it to install.

Step 1. Download the Windows Update Agent:
WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe
WindowsUpdateAgent30-x64.exe

Microsoft KB 949104


Step 2. Force the installation
If installing the agent fails because it is already installed, you can force the install:

WindowsUpdateAgnet30-(x86/x64).exe /wuforce


Finally, you probably want to run a spyware scan (eg. Spybot Search & Destroy or Malwarebytes) because chances are pretty good you've got something. I routinely disable System Restore in these scenarios because that garbage likes to hide in there.

Mount LVM in Ubuntu

I just migrated from RedHat to Ubuntu on a server at my office.

We had Logical Volumes on the RedHat server, and we need the data off of that drive.

mount: unknown filesystem type 'LVM2_member'

Thank goodness somebody smarter than me had run into this before. Here's how you mount a LVM in Ubuntu:

http://www.linux-sxs.org/storage/fedora2ubuntu.html

Note: I did not have to `modprobe dm-mod`.

Common Wireless Internet Problems

Here's the situation: your PC reports "Excellent" signal strength to the wireless router, but your PC is unable to connect to the internet.

As usual, to better understand the possible solutions, we must first address the possible problems.

Some background information:

There are actually 3 connections in this scenario:

1. From the PC to the wireless router
2. From the wireless router to the modem (cable or DSL)*
3. From the modem to the internet

* In some cases, the wireless router and the modem have been "combined" and placed in the same box. In this case, you can just assume that the connection between these two is made and has no problems. If the problem is here, you're in trouble!

When the PC reports "Excellent" signal strength, it is simply referring to connection #1. If you just plugged the wireless router into power, and nothing else, and turned your computer on, it would report "Excellent" signal strength. The PC simply assumes (and we know what that makes it) that if it can connect to the wireless router, then it can connect to the internet. But wait, it is assuming that there are two more connections present and working!

Usually, in this situation, the problem is simply the wireless router and the modem are out of sync. Here's why:

Situation #1:

Every computer in the world on the internet has to have an IP address. It's like a house address for mail delivery. If you don't have an address, you can't get on the internet.* (* This isn't 100% true, but for the purposes of this article, it is.)

The wireless router is in charge of getting the address from your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Well, we could quickly run out of addresses if we just handed them out and they had to be valid forever, so we give them a "lifetime". Usually this is about 1 day. So, every 1 day, the wireless router will talk to the ISP and say, "Hey, my IP address expired. Can I have another one?" At this point, the ISP will say, "Sure, here it is."

Now, to keep things "simple", the ISP will normally give you the same address over and over and over. BUT, if they did that, you could take advantage of that and setup servers and do other things that the ISP doesn't really want you to do because it uses the connection pretty heavily.

This is precisely where the problem comes in. Somehow the wireless router gets out of sync with the ISP. At this point, the wireless router continues to try to use the old IP address and the ISP won't accept it because it just handed out the new IP address and expired the old IP address.

So, your PC is connected to the wireless router with "Excellent" signal strength; the wireless router is connected to the modem; and the modem is connected to the internet -- but the last two connections aren't valid because the wireless router and the ISP are out of sync.

Solution:

1. Unplug the wireless router from the power.
2. Unplug the modem from the power.
3. Count to 30 (60 if you have the time and patience).
4. Plug the modem back into the power.
5. Count to 30 (60 if you have the time and patience).
6. Plug in the wireless router into the power.
7. Wait for your PC to reconnect to the wireless router.

** Also see "Notes for Steps 4 & 5" below!

Situation #2:

Your computer is reporting "limited or no connectivity".

Your computer was unable to get an IP address from the wireless router. (It probably has an AutoIP address of 169.254.xxx.yyy which isn't much good in our situation.)

Possible Problems:

1. The "key" that was entered to connect to the wireless router was input incorrectly.
2. The wireless router has "MAC address filtering" enabled, and your computer isn't on the approved list.
3. The wireless router is out of IP addresses to give out (this isn't very likely).

Again, let's try to understand the process a bit better. When a PC connects to a wireless router, it goes through a few steps:

1. The PC "associates" with the wireless address. This is basically when the PC says "Okay, wireless router, I'm choosing you to connect to, so when I say things, you need to pay attention!"
2. Once this "association" takes place, the PC then tells you that the connection has been made and the signal strength as "Excellent".
3. It then does all the crazy encryption and "key" stuff to encrypt the connection.
4. *It then asks the wireless router for an IP address.
5. *If it cannot get an address, it will notify you that the connection has "limited or no connectivity."

Notes for Steps 4 & 5:

Very seldom you will come across a situation where the IP address has been set manually on your computer. This means that every time your computer connects to the wireless router, it will use the same IP address. This is a bit more technical and requires a small bit of technical know-how, but it's do-able. IF THIS IS THE CASE: then it will skip steps 4 & 5 and just try to use that IP address. If that IP address isn't one of the IP addresses that the wireless router can communicate with, then the PC and the wireless router simply just won't be able to talk to each other. At this point, the computer will not list the connection as having "limited or no connectivity", it simply won't work.

Moving from headless to modded-NAS

So, in an attempt to de-clutter my office area with my webserver, I did some digging.

Seems like most of the older Western Digital MyBook World Editions come preloaded within linux, and have a pretty hefty following for modding the flash to support various features.

I dig it.

And by the way, did I mention that it comes with a gig-ethernet port, and USB port? We'll get to why both are handy in a sec...

So, I purchased a 500GB one, pretty cheap actually. Just do some checking around on Google -- the one I found was refurbished, and ran about 80$.

A good go-to guide.

Looks like it could solve my issue of having a stranded USB printer in my closet upstairs. Assuming this doesn't put out too much heat, I can put it up in my pretty-airy closet upstairs next to the printer, and then use a modded WRT54G to connect it down to my wireless router downstairs.

Spiffy!