ATI graphics card, dual screens, and Ubuntu

For some reason, whenever I have to re-start my Ubunutu 9.10 machine, which is very seldom, I have to cross my fingers and hope that I don't have any strange display issues.  Just this past weekend, there seems to have been a power outage at work and when I tried to boot into Ubuntu, I saw a blank screen rather than the login screen.

After booting into Windows XP without issue, I eventually choose to boot into "Ubuntu, Linux 2.6.31-19-generic" rather than the current default "Ubuntu, Linux 2.6.31-20-generic".  I received a warning about my graphics configuration but was able to log in.  My display was duplicated on both monitors.

When starting ATI Catalyst Control Center, I received a message similar to "There was a problem initializing Catalyst Control Center Linux edition. It could be caused by the following. No ATI graphics driver is installed, or the ATI driver is not functioning properly. Please install the ATI driver appropriate for you ATI hardware, or configure using aticonfig."

There was further messing around to fix the problem which I think can be filtered into the following:

1. Use the lspci command to determine the ATI hardware you are using so that you can download the appropriate driver.  You also may just need to re-install the driver that you already have!  The current driver file for my hardware is ati-driver-installer-10-4-x86.x86_64.run
2. Attempt to run ATI Catalyst Control Center from the menus
3. If unsuccessful, run sudo aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=left
4. Output should be similar to:
   
   

   Found fglrx primary device section
   Found fglrx secondary device section
   Using /etc/X11/xorg.conf
   Saved back-up to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.fglrx-6 

5. Reboot.  Attempt to run ATI Catalyst Control Center to refine settings. 

Hopefully this doesn't happen again for awhile.  If it does, I'll update this post as appropriate ...

Follow-up to this:  Upgraded computer to Ubuntu 10.10 and had to fuss with the dual monitors again as I was either getting mirrored screens or blank screens.  Steps this time:

1. With both monitors connected to computer, run ATI driver (ati-driver-installer-10-10-x86.x86_64.run).  My graphics card is a ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3470
2. Execute sudo aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=left
3. Reboot, but have only one monitor connected until after login into Ubuntu
4. Reconnect other monitor
5. Go to ATI Catalyst Control Center (Administrative) and set up Multi-Display.  Without reboot, the dual monitor (non-mirrored) should be working!