Desktop occupies only a part of the display

**sumithar** · May 4th, 2014

I just installed lubuntu 14 on an old Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop with pentium 4 and 1GB RAM. Installation seemed to go thru fine but when I boot into Lubuntu I find that the desktop occupies only about a quarter of the screen, the top left quadrant as it were. Which pretty much renders it useless at this point!

Any ideas are welcome.

**mörgæs** · May 4th, 2014

Please run

Code:

lspci -k | grep -A3 VGA

and post the results in CODE tags.

**sumithar** · May 5th, 2014

Code:

Inspiron-1100:~$ lspci -k | grep -A3 VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0149
	Kernel driver in use: i915
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

Is this what you wanted?
Thanks

**ibjsb4** · May 5th, 2014

If I read that right, its good. Could you post the output of:

Code:

xrandr

**sumithar** · May 5th, 2014

Code:

Inspiron-1100:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 640 x 480, maximum 32767 x 32767
LVDS1 connected 640x480+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
   640x480        60.0*+   59.9  
VGA1 unknown connection (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
   1360x768       59.8  
   1152x864       60.0  
   1024x768       60.0  
   800x600        60.3  
   640x480        59.9  
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

Hi,
Hope that tells you something!
Thanks!

**Luke M** · May 5th, 2014

The problem is that linux thinks your screen is 640x480. You have to create an xorg.conf file with additional resolutions.

Suggest googling "Dell Inspiron 1100 xorg.conf" and see what you can find.

**mörgæs** · May 5th, 2014

http://superuser.com/questions/34713...-use-vga1-only

**sumithar** · May 6th, 2014

Thank you mörgæs and Luke M and ibjsb4.
I found some instructions to tweak grub to add modeset and tried that. But apart from now displaying the same small sized desktop in the middle of my display (as opposed to the the top left quadrant) it didn't do anything.
I also followed the instructions on the superuser page but that gave me an error message.

At this time it's not worth my time to pursue this exercise any further. I guess I'll just have to take that laptop to my local electronics recycling place

Not that it matters, but I also tried to install Mint and Xubuntu. The former just kept clocking and the latter complained with an illegal video mode, so Lubuntu was the only one that actually installed! I wish the laptop had a DVD drive, my options would have increased a bit, I could have given my tried and trusted Fuduntu a go- I only have that on DVD.