I tried to set up a new flat panel monitor to replace the bulky CRT I'm using now (the flat panel is a Viewsonic VX2035wm). I switched to the latest version of Nvidia drivers that showed up in Administration > Hardware Drivers (version 177), shut down, plugged the monitor in, and booted up. Unfortunately, it was stuck in 1300something by 768, which is MUCH less than I know it can handle, and even less resolution than my CRT (it popped up a message that said, "Please set to 1600something by 1000something or more for good picture quality.").

To attempt to remedy that, I followed some instructions I found on the forums to install version 180.29 of the drivers straight from Nvidia, but the new drivers left my monitor at 640 by 480 - less than version 177!

I decided to just switch back to my CRT monitor for now, and under the new drivers it works fine at the same resolution it was at before (1280 by 960). Does anyone know what I could do before trying again?

(PS: I'm running Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid on i386, fully updated. I know the problem definitely isn't performance - it's dual core 3.06GHz with 2GB of RAM.)