Mandrake 8.1 Problems - Screen Resolution
 

I installed Mandrake 8.1 and it worked fine for a bit using KDE. However now it has resized the desktop to 640x480 and I cannot change it!

Ctrl-Alt-Plus (and minus) have no effect. Most of the dialogs for changing the appearance don't fit on a 640x480 screen so I can't even use them.

I really would prefer not to have to do another full install.

Thanks

Tim

:smash:

Try booting into runlevel 3. in a terminal, su to root if not logged in as root, and type "/sbin/init 3". once out of X and back to the command line type "more /etc/X11/XF86Config-4" Look at the section that says screen, you should have a mode line there something like this: Modes "1024x768" "640x480", if its there and you cant use anything higher then 640x480 then there might be a prob with your driver. If it says "640x480" then try changing it to 800x600 or 1024x768. You can edit the file using vi. example: vi /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.
once the file is open in vi, you hit i to insert and your arrow keys to navigate. If you mess up and get to lost then hit esc then shift+: and type q! enter, that will quit without making changes, if everything looks good then instead of q! do a wq! which will save and quit. then restart x with startx
make sure your video card can support your default color depth also, ie. 8, 16, 24

heres an example of what your config file might look like: http://www.xiph.org/~jack/ibook/XF86Config-4

Video.
 

Hello. Im not familiar with mandrake, but maybe FDrake or hard drake has somthing in it to change it.Or you could run xf86config agian,it will want you to select your keyboard, mouse etc,but its all self explanitory.After that it will get to your monitor and video card, select them etc, and then it will let you choose your resolutions.
Hope this helps.

I'm not sure why your resolution would suddenly change. Exactly how long were you using KDE before this happened? And have you been working as root? Your best bet is to run xf86config.
Roop

Thanks for the input guys! Hopefully I'll get enough time tonight to try to fix it.

I was using KDE for about a week (not as root) and then suddenly I switch on and the icons are now huge and nothing fits on the screen anymore! Most bizarre...

Tim

one thing
 

Hey Tim,
Before you run any of the X config utilities, make a backup of your configuration file, _just_ in case something goes wrong. You can always restore from that file. It's better to have a low resolution screen than none at all!
And as someone else pointed out earlier, switch to run level 3 before doing this so that you are booting into the console and not kdm or whatever. You can do this from the command line, or by eiditing your /etc/inittab file (with a text eidtor). Then when you log in, simply type startx to check your X installation.
Roop