screen resolution not changeable

[Michael Haney]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 12:15 PM, michael <MichaelLinux at web.de> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Ijust upgraded from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04. When restarting I was in a kind
> of restricted mode which suggests me to select a graphic driver. But
> this doesnt help. So I used Envyng to install the my ATI drivers. Then
> the boot was ok, the screen has a resolution of 1280x800. But I have
> still some problems with display/graphics/drivers.
>

I recently had a resolution problem which I finally resolved myself
after a crap load of research.  One way to see if the ATI drivers are
installed is to see if you can enabled Advanced Desktop Effect in the
Appearance applet on the Preferences menu.  If you can do this the
drivers are installed because GLX can't run without the drivers
working.

> 1.If I want to change the screens resolution I get:
>        The X Server does not support the XRandR extension.  Runtime
>        resolution changes to the display size are not available.
> Why this?
>

I got no clue.  I tried running xrandr on my laptop to fix my
resolution problem and it didn't return any errors, and it didn't help
my problem none either.

> 2.I don't see the ATI driver in the restricted drivers menu.
> Is it still not installed somehow?
>

I think Hardware Drivers (jockey-gtk) only shows drivers which are
downloadable from the repositories.  I tried the drives from EnvyNG
for my Nvidia card and Hardware Drivers said they weren't installed
when I knew they were because GLX was working.  Now do the ATI drivers
appear in Hardware Drivers but aren't checked and its status is Not In
Use or is it just not there?

If you installed the drivers via EnvyNG the driver in Hardware Drivers
will "appear" as if its not installed when it really is.

> 3. The overall performance its now very poor, I guess thats also linked
> to that graphics driver mess.
>

That I don't know about.  If X.org was only using the generic frame
buffer I'd that's the reason, but if your resolution is very high
right now I'd say the ATI drivers are working.

> Who can help me?
>

I will try.  One thing you can do is run "sudo displayconfig-gtk" from
a Terminal window, this is the old Screen Resolution applet from the
Preferences menu in Gutsy which is still in Hardy.  This is what
helped me with my resolution problem, I was stuck at 640x480 and
couldn't change it until I used that applet.  You should be able to
tame your display settings with this.

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
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