8.10 Thinks my screen is bigger than it is

[Elssha]

I just installed 8.10 on an old HP pavilion laptop for a friend. I noticed the top bar goes past the edge of my screen and maximized windows are cut off on the right and at the bottom. Fiddling with the panel showed that I have about 130 pixels of dead space to the right and about 75 at the bottom of the screen that I can't see but that ubuntu thinks are there. I can't find any way in settings to fix the screen size. Anyone see the same thing or (more importantly) knows how to make it recognized the real screen size? Thanks a ton,
Elssha

[ajgreeny]

I did have the same problem almost when I installed intrepid to try it. I overcame the problem after backing up xorg.conf

cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xporg.conf.backup

by manually editing the xorg.conf file with

gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and entering the display resolution and refresh rate I wanted in the following format.

Section "Device"
    Identifier    "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier    "Configured Monitor"
            HorizSync    30-80
            VertRefresh    50-75
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier    "Default Screen"
    Monitor        "Configured Monitor"
    Device        "Configured Video Device"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection "Display"
        Modes        "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Find the resolution needed from the monitor specs and do similar to your xorg.conf file.

[Elssha]

how do i know what to set the specs to?

[Elssha]

For some reason the file in 8.10 was blank. I tried installing Hardy (8.04) instead but all it changed was that the bottom now works and the right side dead space now grew to 256pix. The file is not blank anymore, at least.
I tried pasting in what you put but it seems to have no effect.
unless, is there something i have to do (besides saving the file) to put it into effect? I restarted the comp but the file didn't have any visible changes.
Sorry to keep bugging

[ajgreeny]

The laptop specification will tell you somewhere the screen resolution and you should use those figures for the xorg.conf file, not the ones necessarily that I used, as your screen may be widescreen. I think there is a screen resolution menu item if I remember correctly, which will at least tell you what you are using at the moment. If the live CD works OKsee if you can find the resolution set for that in the screen resolution menu item. You may then be able to set that resolution in your installed xorg.conf file as above.

The move to this newer version of xorg has caused a lot of problems for those whose machines don't detect the screen correctly, and the only way I know is to edit the empty xorg.conf file as I showed and then restart x with Ctrl+Alt+Backspace or a reboot. As this did not work for you I don't think I can suggest any more ways to go. Sorry!