As I had posted earlier my laptop was having issues after I got the fan fixed on the system. Now it keeps shutting down randomly anywhere from a min to 15 mins after startup. I have given it to a shop for repair and I am supposed to get it back tomorrow. Keeping my fingers crossed that it will get fixed.
My Dad’s laptop is still having the same issues as earlier (Windows install is messed up on it, Cut and paste doesn’t work. Apps refuse to start etc) but I won’t be messing with it till I get my laptop back. Since the issues got really annoying I started remote desktoping into my desktop from the laptop to work and thats been working really well. Unfortunately the XP on the laptop has gotten into such a state in the past two days that I can’t use rdp on it either. So I decided to avoid windows alltogether and booted off a Knoppix Live Linux CD on the laptop and am using rdesktop on it to access the server (My desktop). So far its working great.
I even got sound working on RDP. I can now play music on the desktop and listen to it on the laptop via RDP. Here’s the command I used to get it working:
rdesktop -r sound -z -x l -f -a 16 192.168.15.10
where:
-r sound:[local|off|remote]
Redirects sound generated on the server to the client. “remote” only has any effect when you connect to the console with the -0 option. (Requires Windows XP or newer).
-z
Enable compression of the RDP datastream.
-x
Changes default bandwidth performance behaviour for RDP5. By default only theming is enabled, and all other options are disabled (corresponding to modem (56 Kbps)). Setting experience to b[roadband] enables menu animations and full window dragging. Setting experience to l[an] will also enable the desktop wallpaper. Setting experience to m[odem] disables all (including themes). Experience can also be a hexidecimal number containing the flags.
-f
Enable fullscreen mode. This overrides the window manager and causes the rdesktop window to fully cover the current screen. Fullscreen mode can be toggled at any time using Ctrl-Alt-Enter.
-a
Sets the colour depth for the connection (8, 15, 16 or 24). More than 8 bpp are only supported when connecting to Windows XP (up to 16 bpp) or newer. Note that the colour depth may also be limited by the server configuration.
I also installed EXT2IFS on the server so that I can get access to my ext3 partitions from windows. This program provides Windows NT4.0/2000/XP/2003 with full access to Linux Ext2/Ext3 volumes by allocating drive letters to the volumes. This means all software installed on the system can access the partitions. Its really cool. Haven’t hit any issues with it so far…
So after installing all this stuff I can work without any major issues. But I still want my laptop back.
Well this is all for now. Hopefully I will get my system back soon.
– Suramya