Archive for category How-To

How-To: Webcamera working with Ubuntu 64bits and Skype

Posted by Carballude in How-To, Linux on February 2, 2010

I’ve Microsoft VX-1000 webcam. It’s not awesome, but it was cheap and it’s doing the job. Troubles came when I wanted to make it work with Ubuntu 64 bits and Skype.

Skype recognises the camera, USB camera (/dev/video) but when you try to use it, its led goes to green for a second and then… darkness. According to the documentation, the camera is fully supported… apparently I’ve a different definition of “fully supported”. However, there is a method to make it work. Basically you’ve to start skype with this command: “LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype”

That’s a little bit uncomfortable, so lets make skype start with a script and be executed every time you boot your machine:

  1. Open a terminal
  2. Write: echo ‘#!/bin/bash’ > skype.sh && echo “LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype” >> skype.sh && chmod +x skype.sh
  3. Go to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications

And there, add a new entry and fill the form. Here’re some images:

Startup applications menu

Now you can start skype by clicking the script you’ve created and it will be launched on each boot :)

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How to fix the Windows Vista 0xc000000e error

Posted by Carballude in How-To, Windows on May 17, 2008

My first Linux distribution was Mandrake (a.k.a. Mandriva),  since that I have always used Debian or Debian based, like Ubuntu. However, I really like to try other distributions and yesterday I downloaded the third beta of Suse 11.0.

I have an ATI X1600 Pro, and that was the first problem. The installation couldn’t detect it well and used the vesa driver… with my double monitor system. Anyway, that is not a big deal, the real problem came when I wanted to boot my Windows Vista.

As you can imagine, I couldn’t. The loader said "0xc000000e The entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt"

The way to fix it wasn’t very easy. I booted from my Vista DVD and I selected the repair option, later the command prompt utility.

In order to fix the issue, we have to set the partition as active, you can use the "diskpart" command to do that (you can write "help" if you need it).

Now we have to repair the boot sequence, so we need to write:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot

Now you should be able to start your windows but in some cases you need to reboot and boot from your Windows Vista DVD and select the "startup repair".

Good luck! I really hate this kind of bugs…

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