Interesting bug solution

Every once in a while I get to thinking "hmmm... what shall I write in my blog? I don't have any muse right now, but I want to write about something". To my surprise, each time that happens, I accidentally find an interesting topic, which is derived from things I stumble upon while surfing the internet.


Last week I've been configuring my not-very-powerful laptop, so it'll be able to remotely connect both my Windows and my Ubuntu. The Ubuntu connection is done via freenx server, while the Windows connection is done through Terminal Services. Actually, I'm writing these lines from a TS session. Most of the time I'm quite happy with this setup. I have full access to my desktop, I can work concurrently with my girlfriend (which is using the desktop, and which I taught the magic ways of using Ubuntu), and I can sit wherever I want, as the data is being encrypted over SSH over my wireless network.


Not all went clear, and both freenx and Terminal Services has some major bugs. The freenx bugs were solved after a short google search, and after hitting the "connect" button enough times (so the Ubuntu realized I'm serious about my intentions to connect). Terminal Services gave me a much harder time. It appears that if you own a powerful nvidia or ATI graphics card, and you work with high-res, TS won't work. This can be solved with some tweaking of the Windows registry, and messing with kernel parameters (what the hell does this have to do with being able to use TS?).

Now, I have a new syndrom: every once in a while Windows decides this is a good time to reboot after a DCOM server crash occurs. This is quite annoying, and I haven't found a good solution for that, yet. In the mean while, I type quickly 'shutdown -a' to abort the annoying reboots, afterwards I restart the DCOM service and the TS service, and everything is back to normal. Awkward.

Me saying I don't have a good solution is only partially true, as I found this web page describing my problem. For some reason, it exists only in the google-cache (I don't know how much longer it'll be there), so I'll quote the solution part:
"
I have put Ubuntu on a second partition and that solved my problem for
now. I still can access my files from the first partition and it
doesn't reboot randomly.
Thanks for all your help!
"

Interesting! Installing Ubuntu solved the reboot issues. How come I didn't think about it.