Stuck on detecting my display nothing works

[jivabill]

Looked at the several threads about this none help. Installed 8.10 on my Compaq Desktop. About 6 years old or so. Using a brand new Sylvania F70 17 inch monitor. Right out of the box, (got a deal on it, someone owned it never used it and now since it is a big old style monitor I got it cheap).

This worked OK in 7.10. I upgraded to 8.04, shortly after that the plague Grub Error 18 hit. Never could solve it. Installed 8.10 hoping for a fix. WRONG.


So now I get two monitor resolutions: 800 x 600 and 640 x 480. Neither one is very useful, make the icons and screens too big.

Went to System>Preferences>Screen Resolution. Showed it set on 800 x 600 with 60hz. Pushed the "Detect Display" button, it pushed but nothing happened.

Tried the remedy of editing configuration of xserver, only would let me change keyboard. I have not tried editing xorg.conf because what I see there in 8.10 is nothing like what was shown by people suggesting editing it.

So anyone got an idea I would like to hear it.
Thanks for reading
bill

[slinkey1981]

Looked at the several threads about this none help. Installed 8.10 on my Compaq Desktop. About 6 years old or so. Using a brand new Sylvania F70 17 inch monitor. Right out of the box, (got a deal on it, someone owned it never used it and now since it is a big old style monitor I got it cheap).

This worked OK in 7.10. I upgraded to 8.04, shortly after that the plague Grub Error 18 hit. Never could solve it. Installed 8.10 hoping for a fix. WRONG.


So now I get two monitor resolutions: 800 x 600 and 640 x 480. Neither one is very useful, make the icons and screens too big.

Went to System>Preferences>Screen Resolution. Showed it set on 800 x 600 with 60hz. Pushed the "Detect Display" button, it pushed but nothing happened.

Tried the remedy of editing configuration of xserver, only would let me change keyboard. I have not tried editing xorg.conf because what I see there in 8.10 is nothing like what was shown by people suggesting editing it.

So anyone got an idea I would like to hear it.
Thanks for reading
bill

Can you post your xorg.conf? What kind of video card are you using?

[jivabill]

Hi Slinkey, Nice to meet you. Here is the whole contents of my xorg.conf

# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# Note that some configuration settings that could be done previously
# in this file, now are automatically configured by the server and settings
# here are ignored.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

[SunnyRabbiera]

Ibex really sucks with monitor detection with the stupid act to remove displayconfig and tools like it in favor of a crappy monitor tool.
I say try to redownload hardy or use another distro, I am not a big fan of ibex

[jivabill]

Hi Sunny, nice to meet you. Yes, I agree I am finding that 8.10 is a piece of crap in more ways than just the display detection. Sure is strange how something can evolve and get better and then all of sudden the coders (notice I did not say programmers) totally lose all the good stuff they had going and the release starts going downhill.

Same thing happened with OS releases when I was a Main Frames Guru. We would do a supposedly perfect update of our OS and the system would be screwed up for a month.

So where I am at is I was running 8.04 (I upgraded on-line from 7.10) and all of a sudden I got the horrible Grub Error 18. Never could find a way around it, the fix of creating a small partition ahead of the main one did not work for me. So I thought foolishly that 8.10 would be an imporvement :-). Looks like I better go back to 7.10, and good thing is I have a full system backup of that I can load to get it running again.

Thanks for your input.
bill

[slinkey1981]

First, try


sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg


If that fails to help you at all please backup your xorg.conf file in case I break it for you.


sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf-backup

Then, replace your xorg.conf text with


# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# Note that some configuration settings that could be done previously
# in this file, now are automatically configured by the server and settings
# here are ignored.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
DefaultDepth "24"
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSection

Hopefully that fixes it for you to use larger resolutions, if it ends up broken, boot to terminal and use this command to restore your backup


sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf-backup /etc/X11/xorg.conf

[slinkey1981]

Hi Sunny, nice to meet you. Yes, I agree I am finding that 8.10 is a piece of crap in more ways than just the display detection. Sure is strange how something can evolve and get better and then all of sudden the coders (notice I did not say programmers) totally lose all the good stuff they had going and the release starts going downhill.

This is why I run 8.04, and even that doesn't see what my monitor is capable of.

7.04 ran flawlessly for me, but I got stupid and listened to my KDE crazed brother who was like a drug pusher when it came to Kubuntu 7.10. I had nothing but problems, and shelved Ubuntu (and linux) completely for a while.

Please try the config I gave you, just so I can brag to myself if it works.

[jivabill]

OK, so I have tried the edit xserver caper before. All it will do is let me change my keyboard settings. No way to do anything with display.

I did edit xorg-conf and put in that code. Did nothing. Went to System>Preferences>Screen Resolution and same thing, two resolutions 800 x 600 and 640 x 480. Push the Detect Display button nothing happens cept the button pushes.

So looks like I will slap in my 7.10 Alternate CD and re install that and then do a restore of my system backup from when I was using 7.10. Interesting thing is I never had any troubles with 7.10 worked good. My grief all started when I did the online upgrade to 8.04. After a couple weeks all of a sudden the Grub Error 18 monster hit, it has been down the toilet ever since. Then I went to 8.10 Aaaaaaahhhhh!

I could load up Xubuntu, I have that on one of my laptops. It is pretty sparse, I am not real happy with it and it had some difficult problems like a default system font about 7, someone really had their head firmly in their rectum on that one. Took several weeks to work out a fix.

Then there is Kubuntu. IF you think Ubuntu has bugs you have not lived yet :-). Kubuntu will really get you going.

Anyway, thanks much for your good help, sorry it don't seem to work.
Regards
Bill