Laptop with external monitor, screen resolution glitches

[tchomby]

Ah! You're right, when you said I had a 1024*768 screen 'on top off' a
1280*1024 screen it clicked,
the 'Monitor Resolution Settings' window actually shows a picture of the
smaller laptop screen on top of the larger external screen. I hadn't
realised what  this picture meant or that I could interact with it, but in
fact I can click on the screens in this image and put them side by side,
etc., instead of on top of each other. Unfortunately if I do this then click
Apply it doesn't seem to work, the screen blanks for a second then when it
comes back the screens have gone on top of each other again. But what did
work was setting the resolution of the smaller screen to 'Off', now
everything follows the larger screen as it should. Only problem is the
smaller screen automatically comes on again whenever I open the laptop lid,
but I should be able to avoid that.

Thanks! Thanks for the xrandr/grandr tip too.

On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 12:17 PM, Paul Kaplan <pkaplan1 at comcast.net> wrote:

> I use kde rather than gnome, so I can offer only some general
> comments/suggestions.
>
> It looks like you might have a 1028x768 screen sitting on top of the
> 1280x1024
> screen, but with both displaying a 1280x1024 background image.  Thus when
> you
> click in the upper left portion of the desktop you are only accessing the
> smaller screen.
>
> I've had similar problems, which, at least w/ kde3.x, largely went away
> when I
> rebuilt /etc/X11/xorg.conf.  If you've retained this file from an earlier
> version of ubuntu, you might have some messed up settings; try commenting
> out
> all unnecessary lines in the file (check the ubuntu wiki for X or xorg).
> Xorg7.3 works with an extremely minimal config file with most of the config
> being
> handled on the fly by xrandr (wiki - xrandr).
>
> Use xrandr to see what your working configuration is (a CLI tool).  You can
> either modify from xrandr or try grandr.
>
> If X is fine, you might have a goofy gnome configuration.  I'm not sure
> what
> directory contains the gnome desktop configuration (the kde equivalent
> would be
> ~/.kde), but you might try renaming it.  Then login again and let the
> system
> rebuild the file from scratch.
>
> Paul
>
> On Saturday 20 September 2008 06:27:42 tchomby wrote:
> > Anyone had this problem before?
> >
> > http://img140.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshotoy4.png
> >
> > This is a screenshot taken from a laptop with a built-in 1024*768 screen,
> > but it's currently using an external monitor which is at 1280*1024. It's
> > running Ubuntu 8.04.
> >
> > As you can see, the screen is at resolution 1280*1024 and all is working
> > fine, except that the top panel is only 1024 pixels wide. No matter what
> I
> > do, I can't make it fill the screen. If I drag the top panel down to the
> > bottom, it stretches to 1280. If I drag the bottom panel up, then as soon
> > as it enters the top left 1024*768 area of the screen it shrinks to 1024.
> > There are several other glitches also, for example if I maximise or
> > fullscreen a window, it goes to 1024*768.
> >
> > Basically, the system seems to be in two minds about what resolution it's
> > at.
> >
> > If I got to Monitor Resolution Settings it's set to 1280*1024 and Clone
> > Screens is not checked, if I check Clone Screens then I can't choose
> > anything above 1024*768.
>
>
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