Resolution problem and more with lcd monitor
 

hi,

i just bought an LCD monitor a few days ago
and i tried to do dual monitor with my laptop
but xinerama option doesnt work.

in xorg file, it says xinerama is on, but its not working


and also, im dual booting with suse 11.0 and windows xp

on windows xp, it cant even detect the right resolution
actually, it doesnt show any widescreen resolution at all.
the max, natural, and recommended resolution for my lcd monitor is 1680x1050, but the only options it shows are 1280x1024, 1600x1200 and so on...
plz help!


btw, my monitor is acer x193w+ with 19" display widescreen and max res. 1680x1050
and my laptop is toshiba a105-s4344 with graphics card integrated intel gma 950...i think...its one of the gma 945 chipsets..


Thanks!

In Windows go to the display properties and uncheck the option that says something like "Only show compatible resolutions", probably in the monitor tab and/or properties and see if after doing that you see the one you would like to set.

In Linux you could first try to install xvidtune and fiddle around with it. If you're able with it to set the monitor to the resolution you would like to have then you might have a chance to somehow be able to set up that mode in the xorg.conf file.
AND you will have to doublecheck that you're using the correct driver for your graphics card and that its settings are correct. I just read for Intel GMA 950 it's probably the xf86-video-intel, version 2.1.0 or higher.

Thank you for your reply
I havent tried your advice on linux yet cuz im doing some work on xp, but on xp, ive already tried unchecking "hide all resolutions that monitor cant support." it only shows non-widescreen resolutions
i dont know why

cuz the same thing happened on my other lcd monitor which is from HannsG 19" with 1440x900 res and i fixed it buy just shutting down the monitor and turning it back on....

it didnt work for acer...

Oh man, you're really unlucky.
Did you try to install the monitor's drivers? Sometimes they're not included with the monitor and you have to download them from the producer's homepage.

hmm well i went to acer support website
they had some kinda driver with acer x193w but i couldnt find the right driver for my monitor
and worse thing is even if that driver is the right one, it seems like its for vista...

Mh, ok.
Then you could have a look at this and this.

ahhhh the information looks goood!
but before that, one more thing....

its weird when i went into the display properties...
my lappy monitor says "plug and play monitor"
and lcd monitor shows "default monitor"
how did that end up like that?
and how can u switch them back?

OMGOMGOMG

Pearlseattle thank you soooooo much
ur advice helped A LOT
and i finally fixed it!

thank you sooo much again
and have a great day, week, month, or even year! lol

Hehe.., happy that it finally worked. But still, it's unbelievable that it was so complicated... .
Well, have fun staring at your monitor :)

hey now i have a problem on linux hahaha

how do u deal with xvidtune?
i feel like im gonna mess up both of my lappy and monitor....
any advice?

currently the lcd monitor is using 1024x768 res, when its supposed to be 1680x1050...
and cloned instead of xinerama

Terrible. :D
Well, first of all you should configure the monitor on its own - forget the dual monitor stuff for the time being.
In Xvidtune, for a resolution of 1680x1050 for the LCD screen of my notebook I have:
HSyncStart 1728 VSyncStart 1052
HSyncEnd 1760 VSyncEnd 1058
HTotal 1840 VTotal 1100

Those settings give as a result:
Resolution 1680x1050
Pixel Clock 119 Mhz
Horizontal Sync 64.67
Vertical Sync 58.79

Try with these settings as a base and once they're set click on "Test" and see what happens.

If that works, start up nvidia-settings and do the setup for dual-monitor. This will generate a xorg.conf containing two "monitor"-sections. Now let xvidtune generate the modeline, modify your xorg.conf with that (one of the two "Monitor"-sections you're supposed to have - one for the laptop monitor, the other one for the external monitor), restart X and see if that works.

You'll have to select in nvidia-settings the option not to have a cloned display. I personally don't use xinerama because the two displays I have have different resolutions and with xinerama it was looking really weird - I use two separate X-desktops (but of course the keyboard and mouse are shared between them).
One big problem of xinerama is that the apps that are not xinerama-aware pop up their graphical stuff in the middle of the virtual display, which is of course between the two monitors, so I always ended up getting message boxes split up between the two screens. With separate screens this problem doesn't occur.

Here is my configuration that generates two separate desktops on the two screens - might be handy as an example (as you can see I don't have a modeline in the monitor sections - only the frequency ranges):
p.s.: ah, damn, you don't have an nVidia GPU, right? Well, in this case just play around with xvidtune and my config example.