Solving HDMI droupouts (ATI HD5650 in Acer’s Aspire 3820TG)

After installing a new version of ATI/AMDs driver and Catalyst Center for the Radeon Mobile HD5650 (hybride) my external screen (connected via HDMI2DVI) would occassionally turn black for a second or less. At first, I blamed my screen. I connected another screen but the problem remained, I still observed short, sporadic dropouts.

The solution was getting rid of any ATI drivers on the system and reinstalling the following Acer driver: “VGA_AMD_8.752.0.0_W7x86x64_A”. I downloaded it from Acer’s support Web site.

The download is called:  “VGA Driver (Radeon HD 5650 & Radeon HD 5470) AMD    8.752.0.0    195.3 MB    01/31/2011 “.

Then, I followed this steps to successfully reinstall the driver and get rid of the dropouts:

1. Uninstalled all ATI related software (Catalyst & Co)
2. Uninstalled the drivers of your VGA cards in the Device Manager
3. Deleted all ATI folders on the disk
4. Booted into safe mode and ran AMD Catalyst TwL Cleaner v3.9.2.cmd
5. Rebooted and installed VGA_AMD_8.752.0.0_W7x86x64_A

How to uninstall Adobe Drive CS4

To uninstall Adobe Drive CS4 (and thereby remove the annoying context menu entry):

1. Run “regedit” and locate the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
2. Locate the key-folder that contains Adobe Drive CS4 and copy the hex code from its “UninstallString”-key (something like {A3111194-144A-0000-0000-C128FE0D0000}, copy just the hex code without the curly brackets)
3. Run “cmd.exe” with administrator privileges
4. Execute the following command (including curly brackets):
msiexec /x {PASTE-THE-HEX-CODE-FROM-ABOVE-HERE} /qb ADOBE_SETUP=1

This procedure worked fine to properly uninstall Abobe Drive CS4 on Windows 7 x64

How to start PUTTY or winSCP from Ant (exec task)

I’ve recently automated the deployment of benchmarks on remote machines using Apache Ant.
And if something doesn’t work as it should it is very helpful to be able to start a SSH-session to the problematic server with a double click.
Here we go:
<target name="start-putty">
<exec executable="PATH\\TO\\cmd.exe" failonerror="false" spawn = "true">
<arg line="/K start PATH\\TO\\PUTTY.exe root@${TARGET_IP} -pw ${ROOTPW}"/>
</exec>
</target>

Please note the double backslashes in the path. And of course, you have to specify the correct path to the executables or store it in a variable or ant property file.

The same works for winscp, too. This time I’m using Ant variables:
<target name="start-winscp">
<exec executable="${cmd}" failonerror="false" spawn = "true">
<arg line="/K start ${winscp} sftp://root:${ROOTPW}@${TARGET_IP}"/>
</exec>
</target>

create and format ntfs partitions without using windows tools -> use Knoppix

WARNING: this may damage your computer and waste your data! Do not follow these instructions unless you’re a computer expert and have recently made a backup of your data! I cannot be made responsible for any damages!

If you cannot or do not want to use the windows cd for creating and formatting ntfs partitions you can also use a Knoppix live cd:
Download and burn the ISO-image to a cd and boot your computer with it.
Wait until the Knoppix desktop has loaded:
If you just need to format an existing partition, use qtparted. Click on “Root-Shell” (in one of the menus in the taskbar) and type:
qtparted and format the desired partition.

If you also need to create/delete a ntfs partition before formatting it, use gparted. Open a root shell (see above) and type:
gparted
After creating the partition with gparted accept/apply the changes and start qtparted to format the partition.