Display resolution problems

Gopher Love · 10-31-2009, 08:37 AM

Ok, so heres whats going on. I just installed Ubuntu and am completely new to Linux OS but i'm good with computers and learn quick.

I installed my NVidia GPUs drivers and now one of my displays won't use the resolution it's supposed to.

I have two displays. One is a 19" widescreen comp screen and the other is my 32" HDTV (Sharp, ask if you need more info on any hardware or software). The tv is hooked up with a VGA cable right now because i dont have a DVI to HDMI converter anymore.

When it's hooked up with the VGA cable it's max res is 1024x768. I know this because i had it set like this on windows and recently on my Ubuntu Linux install... but once I updated the driver, its max resolution is 640x420 or some crap....

Anybody know what the problem might be??

There are like 5000000 topics on display issues just like this on ubuntu... but I can't get any of those things to work...

Please help, I was really starting to like Linux, but if I cant get the display to work properly, my dual boot with windows is going back to crappy old... windows....

Mr-Bisquit · 11-01-2009, 02:20 PM

Did you use nvidia-xconfig?
What you may need to do is go to an older kernel and install the distributions default nvidia driver packages then go to the most recent kernel and use the nvidia packages from nvidia.

Run nvidia-xconfig from both kernels starting with the older first. Run nvidia-settings on each also following the same pattern of order.

All of this will have to be done as root by disabling your display manager.

Gopher Love · 11-06-2009, 02:35 AM

Ok, um, New to linux.. as in this is the first time i've installed it.

BUT I have good news, i'm very good with computers and am a very fast learner... so i'm not totally dumb.

But to answer one question , Yes I used nvidia-Xconfig to setup the displays after I installed the newest NVidia drivers.

Basically I was using the Ubuntus setup for the displays and then wanted to update my video cards drivers cuz my movies (primarily H.264 files) were skipping and I thought this might fix it (I read that without the drivers these file types are played through the processor and not the video cards GPU). So then once I got that installed... I went to setup my multiple displays and it only let me use the low resolution.

But I had problems with my partitions and have to reinstall linux anyways

So, I will reinstall and go through everything right this time and see what happens. Last time I didn't know anything, Now I know alot more about how linux runs and whats going on behind the scenes with it so we'll see what happens. Thanks for your help.