I have Mint 64bit installed on a Dell Latitude D620 that I use in a docking station with a second LCD attached when working, but at home, I use without the external LCD.

The problem is, when the external LCD is not attached, the login screen is 1440x900, but when I press ENTER after inputting my password, the LM10 logo shows in the center of the screen, then immediately switches down and to the right, indicating that the screen resolution just switched to 1024x768

I've tried deleting the nVidia proprietary drivers, and then it starts and stays in 1440x900, but the external LCD then doesn't work correctly. The mouse doesn't go to the edges of the screen, among other problems. Only nvidia-settings and using xorg.conf work for both LCDs to show correctly at boot, and stay in the correct resolution after logging in.

I've even tried using different versions of the nVidia drivers. No joy.

I'd like to be able to just login and use 1440x900 on the laptop's LCD, and 1600x1200 on the external LCD at work, and not have to run nvidia-settings and change the laptop's LCD off 1024x768 every time I boot it up outside of work.

Why doesn't this 64bit version of nvidia drivers not auto-detect the internal LCD as it should? I'm thinking this is the 64bit version because I have an Acer laptop with 32bit Mint which switches just fine. I wrote a script that does
sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.One /etc/X11/xorg.conf
and
sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.Two /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I just run the script at the end of a session where I know I'll be adding or removing the external LCD.

Thanks for any insight, or even a confirmation that this is a bug over which we have no control.

As a new member, I received an email telling me nobody had responded to this thread after 5 days, so I should add additional information.

Well, here's some additional information. I switched from Gnome to WindowMaker and everything works as advertised. I suspect the Gnome install got corrupted, but not knowing the internals of Gnome well enough, and not wanting to have the bulk of KDE, I switched [back] to WindowMaker.

The advantage of using wmaker (other than the resolution) is that wmaker is extremely fast, very customizable, and just works.

The only drawbacks are the system tray options and mixer apps. I have (for now) settled on using perlpanel with everything removed except the battery applet (why does it say I have 153% charge?) and the tray. I tried docker, but it's limited to 4 tray icons and I always have more than that. As for the mixer, the one with perlpanel works, though my volume and mute buttons on the laptop don't. I may find a solution for that, but since this post is about resolution. I'm done.

WindowMaker has been developed a bit, and does things very well now.
Read about it here: http://windowmaker.org/