dual monitor not working nvidia 195.36.24Oubuntu

[jweaver28]

I have a dual monitor setup, between Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7 via WUBI (severe problems already reported when tried to use strait cd setup). When I first got this working, I was annoyed that dual screen was disabled, hence worked more in Win7 than Ubuntu. About a month or 6 weeks ago, I got the second monitor working in Lucid (Ubuntu 10.04), and figured out that my mouse wasn't tracking properly between the two screens because ubuntu for some strange reason thought they were katty korner rather than vertically arranged (or even horizontally arranged as is the Win7 default). The dual display worked until about two weeks ago, when the bizarre tracking resumed--Lucid now thinks my displays are side-by-side and I can't get into System/Monitors to change it like I did before. All I get today is the message: "could not get screen information: RANDR is not present." Checking synaptic, LIBXRANDR2 is present, as is x11-xserver-utils (7.5+1ubuntu2) and totem. Trying to get the dual display working, I added through synaptic 8 RANDR affiliated packages, including libxcb-randr0, gnome-randr-applet, and lxrandr (0.1.1-2). No packages were removed by synaptic during that installation. I did not try to add the developer and debugging packages because I don't have that technical expertise.

FYI, I have been installing the normal ubuntu updates using update manager, though this AM wasn't able to get a ubuntu screen beyond the flash screen until I went into corrective mode and checked for and installed broken packages (8 installed/corrected before the 8 installations apparently involved in the RANDR attempt and none of the updates seemed to involve nvidia or xorg files). FYI, this machine has an Athlon 4 core processor, Biostar MB and a GeForce 9400 video card. Bug reporting via the F2 method mentioned in the Ubuntu forums is impossible. Apparently, bug packages aren't included anymore in the general releases, though today I installed aport and its 37 related files. Sorry I can't understand the Bugs/FindRightPath wiki explanation to figure out which of these files is the culprit. When I had the same problem in Win7, it was eventually solved by an nvidia tech (after 2 weeks correspondence!) using a non-intuitive solution (not the previously normal Windows/Display Properties mode--I think some system settings but I can't remember without going to the other boot, which will kill this report). There's a limit to the amount of time I'm going to spend on this--trying to report this bug has already cost me over an hour.

I hope this is accurate and helpful. The system/about Ubuntu link is useless for finding the package version beyond the 10.04 I already knew since it's nearly an advertisement "Ubuntu -- Linux for Human Beings." Synaptic says:
Nvidia-current installed version is 195.36.24-0ubuntu1-10.04
nvidia-settings is 195.36.08-0ubuntu2
nvidia-common is 0.2.23
nvidia-glx-185 is 195.36.24-0ubuntu1-10.04
nvidia-173 is 173.14.22-0ubuntu11
nvidia-173-modaliases is 173.14.22-0ubuntu11
nvidia-96-modaliases is 96.43.17-0ubuntu1
nvidia-current-modaliases is 195.36.24-0ubuntu1-10.04
xserver-xorg-video-nouveau is 1:0.0.15+git20100219+9b4118c
xserver-xorg-video-nv is 1:2:1.15-1ubuntu3
sysinfo is 0.7-3ubuntu1
I trust neither the normally loaded versions of jockey nor smartdimmer are involved since this isn't a laptop and I don't know what jockey is.