sync and refresh rates on a laptop

i currently have a hp pavillion zv6000 and have installed slackware 12.0. my resolution is not as high as it should be and after editing xorg.conf by hand for some reason it doesnt allow me to change my resolution. using xorgconfig was recommended to me but two crucial parts are the horizontal sync and vertical refresh. ive run across two problems with that. 1. i dont have that information for my laptop and couldnt find it. 2. i have a warranty through best buy and they broke my lcd and then replaced so there is no guarentee that any info hp will give me is correct.

also ive tried contacting best buy and they are no help. is there anyway i can get this information? even if its just for the normal pavillion zv6000 anything is a start.

well, I'm not familiar with that laptop at all, but I know that on an LCD you won't hurt anything by puting in the wrong values for the refresh rates, just be sure to edit your inittab so that you boot into runlevel 3 (which doesnt start up X automatically) that way if you did something wrong you can fix it, to do this just replace the "id:5:initdefault:" at the beginning of the /etc/inittab file with "id:3:initdefault:".

A good base refresh rate would be:
HorizSync 31.5 - 90.0
VertRefresh 60.0 - 60.0

I've used that with slackware and an LCD moniter, it should work. I hear that CRT's can actually be damaged if you put in the wrong values though, just a heads up.

Just to concur with what violettheconqueror said, the sync and refresh rates are irrelevant on a laptop unless you are hooking it up to an external CRT-type display. Since the resolution is really about all we need to mess with, may I ask what you've got it to do so far? I did some work on a zv5000 once, your's is probably quite similar. With the 15.4" widescreen, the native resolution was 1280x800. What did you get?

Besides going into a different runlevel, if you do get the graphics system up and it looks screwy, you can hit CTRL+ALT+BKSPC to kill the X Server and go back to a command line.

PS Even if Best Buy replaced the LCD, it is extremely unlikely that any of the specs changed. I replace laptop LCDs regularly, and can tell you that only by careful planning can you use something different and still have it work right.

well right now i have it running 1024x768 but I do have graphics which is better than nothing. my native resolution is 1280x800 and with other distros ive just added the resolution to my xorg.conf and it works fine, but for some strange reason it did nothing in slackware. i couldnt find any differences between my edited xorg.conf and the original. after doing research i came across the xorgconfig command but it asks for the sync and refresh and warns you that it could damage the screen, but i did not know that it shouldnt affect my lcd. thanks for the help. after running xorgconfig and putting in low values everything seems to be working fine. i now have the 1280x800 resolution ive been looking for. thanks again