Video resolution change leaves me in the black
 

Hello everyone. I am somewhat new to Linux and have run into a problem. I just tried changing my video resolution from 1024 x 768 to 800 x 600, and I receive an error from my Dell monitor stating 'cannot display this resolution'. I know that it can, because all my other Windows computers work fine on it (KVM switch). I booted to runlevel 3 and ran 'XFree86 -configure' followed by 'XFree86 -xf86config /root/XF86Config.new'. My hope was that I could boot to this file. How do you edit a file from the shell? I am running Redhat 9, and everything was running fine until this. Thanks.

I use vi, others use emacs and other others use something else. vi might be complicated at first, so you might consider another one (I'm not familiar with them).

Do you still have your original X configuration file? It's easiest to use that one (I think).

You most probably have to modify the lines HorizSync and VertRefresh in this file. Look in your monitor documentation to find the values for these settings.
You might be able to find these values using your monitors OSD, but this is a bit more work.

A very short emacs help in this thread