Virtual PC and Screen Res

Greetings and thanks for welcoming me to this board.

I am a complete Linux Newbie but have been unable to resist the temptations of it and decided to give it a whirl for the first time.

To start off with I installed Mandrake 9.1 as a new PC in Virtual PC 5.2.

The install appeared to go without a hitch and it loads up ok.

The problem is that for some bizarre reason the KDE 'desktop' appears in what looks like 2048x640 resolution and I'm unable to read what's on the screen.

I'm pretty certain I accepted the default options when Installing and I'm led to believe that virtual PC uses VGA res, so I'm not really sure what to do next, as I cant do anything in Mandrake due to my not being able to read anything

Any help would be most welcome so that I can get cracking

Thanks

FIrst off, press Ctrl-Alt-F1 key combination should bring up a console, thats readable.

Login as root. then type

cd /etc/X11
ls

In their is a file called XF86Config-4 (Or it maybe XF86Config)

and type

vi XF86Config-4

this should load the file into the vi editor, what you need to do is scroll down the file and look for

Subsection "Display"

Their should be several of them, and tell us what resolutions that are set there.

(obviously theres ways of doing this in KDE but since you can't see it....)

Oh to get out of vi. your press shift-q. then type q and enter.

Thanks for your help. Much appreciated.

I got to the:

vi XF86Config-4

bit and then pressed the wrong key and the screen went blank apart from a flashing cursor and I wasn't able to do anything more.

I've just reset the "Virtual PC" and will try again...

Back shortly

Right...here goes:

There are 4 "display" sub-sections

Depth 8 "800x600" "640x480"
Depth 15 "800x600" "640x480"
Depth 16 "800x600" "640x480"
Depth 24 "800x600" "640x480"

On the face of it, this would appear to be what I need so why am I getting 2048 x 480??

Any help/advice most welcome

Thanks again

Sorry for the delay... But I simply can't find anything to help.

It maybe a problem with VirtualPC interfering with the X setting but I'm just not sure...

Had the same problem and no still problems with sound card setup

Basically use a Trio32 Card, rather than the detected Trio64

This worked for me. I not sure how to correct this post install, but re-installing should work fine.

Hi!, i had the same problem only i was using RedHat, is odd that this is happening cause i Installed RH8 and it worked correctly but since so much bugs wher ein RH8 i decided to Install RH9.... and Wham...

My guess is this, Linux in its newer implementation is not recognizing the Right amounto of Video Ram for the card...

Under Win98 the card gets recognized as a S3 Trio32/64 PCI (732/764) and it is using a "Standard Monitor"

one of the things i noticed was that when i installed i choose the Default amount of VRAM but the card has 8MB (can somebody confirm this?)

The other thing is I think that we might be trying to give Linux the specs of the phisical Monitor when in fact Virtual PC is using a generic monitor.

I havent had time to test my theories but... i think i would share my thoughts

Set your video card to Trio 32 (Generic) and set your color settings to 64 thousands colors instead of the 16 million colors. Then your can set your screen resolution to any setting. I have mine set at 1024 X 768. Everything works fine after this.
Note: Perform the setup during the installation process.

I am totally new to Linux. Did a Virtual PC install and screwed up on the video display.

Used VI editor and editted the XF86Config file so that it read s3 Trio (generic) 8192 memory, 16 bit color

rebooted and everything worked great.

I would like to think I was making good progress on this issue when I starting running into probems and found this thread. Let me explain what I've already tried:

Situation:
Virtual PC 5.2 running on Windows 2000 SP4
Guest OS is RedHat 9
VPC properties tell me 8 MB VRAM, and I configured 128 MB main RAM.

Goal:
Getting X to run at 1152x864 at 16-bit color.

I am already somewhat familiar with the XF86Config file, and with some help from google and this forum, I have accomplished the following:

1. I can boot into 1024x768 at 16-bit color
2. I can boot into 1152x864 at 8-bit color

If I remove other modes from the file to force 1152x864 mode when it is configured for 16-bit color, I get errors when X tries to start. I could include my XFree86.0.log info if it would help.

Things I have already tried in XF86Config:

1. Tweaked the values for HorizSync and VertRefresh
2. Tried both Trio64 and Trio32
3. Tried both 4096 (default) and 8192 VideoRam
4. Tweaked the DefaultDepth, Depth, and Modes lines

Has anyone ever attempted / succeeded to configure X running under Virtual PC to run higher than 1024x768 with 16-bit color or higher?

TIA,
harry349