where did my 2nd screen go?

[Alan McKay]

Hey again folks!

This is tangentially related to my ntop issue.  After I got ntop
installed, it hung my machine solid when I tried to run it.  Hmmmm.
So I figured I jig with my video drivers just because I was suspicious
about them to begin with :-)

A bit of history - I'd been running Vista on this box for a year now -
Acer Aspire 1200 with an integrated nVidia card that says it is a
GeForce 9200.  The Ubuntu 9.10 live CD ran fine and I got a good
display on my main VGA display - but nothing on my HDMI TV.  I'd just
recently bought an HDMI cable and and new LCD TV so have been finally
taking advantage of this feature of my PC to watch movies.

Anyway, live CD worked fun, but when I installed and rebooted, it came
up and X was not working - I just got a flickery screen with a text
login prompt.  I could not CTRL-ALT-anything to get a text console.
Though I eventually did get one by luck I guess.  By this time I'd
read about envyng and had it downloaded, so I ran it and rebooted - it
worked!  I even got my HDMI TV going though it seemed a bit flakey.

The driver that envyng got me was 185.18.36

In the meantime I'd looked at the nVidia site manually and downloaded
NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-190.42-pkg2.run, but did install it.

Then after my ntop hung, I figured what the heck, I'd try the manual
one.  So I did envyng --uninstall-all and when I rebooted I was back
to my flickery screen with no X and no way to log in.  That's when I
discovered from another PC that Ubuntu does not have the ssh server by
default :-)   Luckily I'd installed webmin and was able to install the
ssh server with it, and get in.

So I ran the manual NVIDIA driver, it built and installed, but when my
PC came back up I went into the nVidia display tool and it did not see
my 2nd monitor anymore!   My LCD TV.   I tried a bunch of stuff and
nada.  So I figured I'd put the envyng back on there (but not without
first trying ntop with this driver - still hung).  Not knowing how to
uninstall the manual driver, I just ran envyng again and it appeared
to install fine.  I boot, and here I am now.  The installed driver is
once again 185.18.36 - but still no sign of my 2nd display from within
the nVidia tool.

Any help out there?   Did I do something wrong?

I really suck at X-based Linux :-(   I've dealt with servers for many
years now but all my knowledge falls down when it comes to displays.

thanks,
-Alan

-- 
“Don't eat anything you've ever seen advertised on TV”
         - Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food"