I recently installed the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) upgrade on one of my multiple display systems. This particular one is the previously mentioned  HP a6110n, in a triple-headed configuration using the built-in Nvidia GeForce 6150SE/nForce 430 video and a generic GeForce 7300 card with two display outputs. The update process runs for a while, including a few reboots.

After the default upgrade process completed, the system was running ok, except the multiple displays weren’t working any more. Specifically, the primary display reverted to the built-in video, and only one of the two displays on the GeForce 7300 was selectable. I tried re-detecting the displays but nothing turned up. I also tried changing the primary display to be on the GeForce 7300 instead of the built-in GeForce 6150SE, which worked, but still didn’t make the second display on the GeForce 7300 turn up in any Control Panel dialogs.

In the end I went to the Nvidia web site and downloaded the latest version of their driver software (ForceWare Release 169.25, dated December 20, 2007). This was more recent than the latest version available in in Windows Update, and appears to have fixed the problem. After installing the updated drivers (and more reboots) all 3 displays were visible from the Control Panel. I did have to select “Extend the desktop on to this monitor” again in Display Settings to get the displays to work, but both video graphics controllers and all three displays were visible from the NVidia Control Panel immediately after updating the driver software, which was the main problem following the Vista SP1 upgrade.

At this point the multiple monitor configuration seems to be working correctly. I observed some problems with random display swapping while I was in the middle of updating drivers and changing display settings, and during the first day or so after updating the system. The primary display would spontaneously move from one monitor to another, or one monitor would become disabled and any open windows would jump to another monitor, but things have settled down now.

The typical setup I’ve been running for desktop PCs has been a 3-headed configuration, with the video from the motherboard’s chipset running one display while two more video outputs come from an additional card. This has been simple to get going on WinXP, usually just requiring whatever cheap dual-output card is on sale at Frys and away we go. I took the same approach to adding multiple displays to a prebuilt Windows Vista system, and was gradually convincing myself that I could only run either the integrated graphics, or the two video displays from the additional card, since I could get one or the other to work but not both.

It turns out that running multiple video displays is actually pretty easy on Windows Vista, but only if all the displays are running the same underlying graphics driver, i.e. the video chipsets need to be from the same vendor and generally pretty recent. I had initially dropped in whatever video card was lying around, which turned out to be different than what was on the motherboard.

Lately I’ve been using the HP Pavilion a61xx and a63xx boxes as generic prebuilt systems. They come with Nvidia GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 chipset for integrated video. I have been adding a generic Nvidia GeForce 7300 card for around $70 (from Frys) with good results. I probably should have known better than to throw some random video card in there and expect it to work, but that works just fine on WinXP.

Microsoft - Multimonitor Support and Windows Vista 

This reminded me of a problem I encountered in the stone ages of personal computing, which is a limitation of the original DOS file system. Basically, you can’t put too many files in the root directory of a DOS file system, as there is a fixed and relatively limited storage space assigned to it when the file system is created. If you want to put hundreds of files on a DOS16 file system, you need to use subdirectories. The DOS16 file system is widely used by many flash-based devices including digital cameras, music players, and USB sticks, even though it’s rarely used by desktop systems today. The Windows XP and Vista error messages for the full DOS root directory problem are cryptic at best, so I suspect others may come across this problem while setting up their digital picture frames and similar devices after the holidays.

If you are having a problem copying files onto your flash card or USB storage device, and it’s not actually full already, try creating a subdirectory or two to hold your files instead of copying them to the root directory.

My initial workaround has been to use Internet Explorer to view the Java applications. Over the weekend I had a little time to investigate, and it turns out this is a known problem, and there is a workaround that will fix this until the next update to Firefox:

As mentioned in today’s Weekly Update, a serious regression involving Firefox 2.0.0.8 and JAVA (JRE 1.6 update 3)on Windows Vista ONLY has been identified. Bug 400467: Java broken on Vista after Firefox 2.0.0.8 upgrade (says Java Not Found, Or Not Working). Reviewing the bug report, the bug filer had upgraded to Fx 2.0.0.8 earlier that morning and attempted to launch/play a JAVA based game at Pogo.com and was told that they could access the site with IE7. There is a possible work-around for this:

1. Right click Firefox icon and choose “Run as administrator”
2. Accept UAC prompt
3. Enter any site which use a Java applet, Java should load normally
4. Close Firefox
5. Run Firefox again, but in normal mode (without administrator privileges)

This worked for me. This is a surprisingly major bug to get through the release process, though.

Recently added: sandra-qn, sandra-oa, sandra-sc, sandra-ss, sandra-eb, sandra-ri, sandra-md, sandra-jy, sandra-ro, sandra-ew, sandra-pv, sandra-hn, sandra-mm, sandra-lb

This sort of spam really calls for a regular expression filter, if I ever get around to doing some blog maintenance.

However, it turns out that there are reference implementation drivers for the Rendition Verite V2100/V2200 graphics chip that work on Windows 2000.

Wikipedia article on Rendition, the Verite graphics processor, and its use in Diamond Stealth S220.

Here is where I found a useable Windows 2000 driver for the Diamond Stealth S220 / Rendition Verite.

Warning - this driver is a little unstable. The original poster reports:

DISCLAIMER: I am unsure of the quality of this driver, my computer can sometimes be unstable and will randomly freeze or hang: suddenly the mouse will not move anymore and the keyboard doesn’t respond. Sometimes a pattern comes up on the screen and sometimes everything looks fine but nothing works. The machine still replies to a ping when this happens, but won’t accept any network connections. So something is wrong, it could be this driver or it could be something else dodgy in my computer. Try it and see, I would be really interested to know how everybody else goes with this.

There may be other drivers available from the registration- subscription- and fee-based driver sites. Interestingly, at least one site gives you the option of viewing a lot of ads instead of registering for access to their driver library. I tried this, but it turned out that the last page redirect after all the ads goes to a non-existent page.

Unfortunately, on a clean install of Win2K followed by SP4 (which tightened the security model), Windows Update won’t work, as it want to install and use the updated BITS service. The symptoms are that it will try to install, then report that the installation failed.

After a lengthy search online, here are the two steps that appear to fix it (worked for me):

1. Make sure that “Microsoft Client for Networks” is one of the installed services for the network adapter. I started out with just TCP/IP. I’m not completely convinced that this is needed, but it was mentioned in a few places.

2. In the User Administration control panel, add Administrator (or the account you’re using to update from) to the Backup Operators group.

After making these two changes, Windows Update will begin to work as expected, instead of failing every time.

This evening I’ve discovered that this version apparently doesn’t like PCAnywhere installed on the system. So it asks you to manually remove PCAnywhere 10.5 (another Symantec product). They helpfully guide you to a page on the Symantec website describing their remedy, which is to download and run another utility that removes all previous versions of assorted Symantec products such as AntiVirus, Internet Security, PCAnywhere etc.

Unfortunately, that utility also complains that it can’t uninstall PCAnywhere and wants you to do it from the Windows Add/Remove Software dialog.

Which doesn’t actually have a “remove” button to uninstall PCAnywhere.

Which requires digging up the original PCAnywhere CD-ROM, to run its setup utility, which also allows you to remove the program. I save the various host profiles first, then successfully complete the uninstallation process.

Unfortunately, both Norton Internet Security 2007 and the Norton Removal tool still think PCAnywhere is installed. And Norton Internet Security 2006 is semi-broken now, so e-mail isn’t working any more.

I run regedit, and search for keys related to PCAnywhere. I delete most of the ones I find, although for some reason there are a couple under \HKLM\Software\Symantec\ that can’t be deleted, even though I’m logged in as administrator.

At this point I’ve blown more than an hour debugging Symantec’s installer, and have nothing to show for it other than screwing up my e-mail config and removing PCAnywhere from my system. Now I rummage around some more to find the Norton Internet Security 2006 CD-ROM and attempt to re-install that to try to fix the existing application.

There’s no “Repair Installation” option on NIS 2006, but I try the “Modify Installation” option and e-mail seems to be working again.

I suspect the problem lies with the registry keys that can’t be deleted, but don’t have the time to research it at the moment. This is on a fully patched Windows XP SP2 system, it may be fussy about permissions for registry changes. I deleted several other keys without any complaints though, so it’s just a few that are sticking.

I feel like I should send.an invoice for technical consulting to Symantec after I get this sorted out. It’s a fairly miserable process, and I seem to go through some variant of this every year.

I ran the Broadband Reports network speed test a few times for a quick comparison of the delivered bandwidth:

The PacBell DSL service is rated at 1.5mbits down, 384kbits up, tested at 1317 down, 324 up:

The Comcast cable service is rated at 4mbits, 384kbits up, tested at 4620 down, 356 up:

DSL and cable modem access technology have different characteristics, in particular the DSL connection speed is determined by the modem, while the cable modem speed is partly determined by shared traffic on the subscriber’s branch of the cable network. Comcast’s 4mbps product will allow burst traffic at up 6mbps, so you can see higher than rated bandwidth if traffic is light. In contrast, DSL performance tends to be pretty stable.

My preference would have been to change the existing 1.5mbps/384kbps DSL connection to the 6mbps/768kbps service that’s available elsewhere from PacBell/SBC, but I apparently can’t get it in Palo Alto today. The Palo Alto fiber loop runs down Bryant a few hundred yards away, but there’s no convenient ISP for connecting there yet. I haven’t been too excited about getting the Comcast service, as the cable TV service here goes out fairly regularly, in contrast to my DSL line which basically stays up, other than power failures. The higher speed is nice for watching internet video, but I need my VPN and data services to be more stable than what Comcast is providing today. Still looking for a better alternative.

I typically use that feature to select text and graphics from HTML e-mail and paste it into Word documents for editing and formatting.

After installing IE7, text from the copied selection within Outlook can still be pasted into a Word document without any problems, but any images in the selection turn up as empty picture objects. So I end up with text, and blanks where the images should be.

This might be related to new browser security settings somewhere, but I don’t have time to sort it out at the moment and a quick online search doesn’t turn up any obvious fixes. However, uninstalling IE7 apparently does restore the old IE6 HTML handlers used by Outlook, which fixes this problem. I think Outlook just uses the latest version of the HTML layout control on the system.

I don’t have a pressing need to upgrade to IE7, as these days I mostly run Firefox, making extensive use of the tabbed browsing feature. However, some sites require Internet Explorer, and others don’t print well in Firefox, so I still regularly use both. I was looking forward to tabbed browsing in IE, though.

If anyone knows how to fix the image copy-paste behavior, I’ll give IE7 another try. I’m done with it for now.