Screen Resolution

[oakridge]

Thank you sudodus.

I will follow your first suggestion and the first part of the second and strongly hope that it does not come to a re-installation. Three of us in household work from home and the Ubuntu acts as an excellent file server. It was bad enough changing from the failing Mandriva to Ubuntu in late 2011, to make me put off a such drastic action as long as possible.

Malcolm

[sudodus]

Good luck

[oakridge]

This message seems to have got itself repeated....

Thank you sudodus and grahammechanical for your replies.

Yes there are two machines; one Windows 7 with a 23" 1920*1080 monitor and the Ubunto currently on the standard HP monitor. Now that I can do pretty well everything I need to do as well, and in some cases better, with the Ubuntu I want to swap monitors. As I have said my eyesight is very poor and the large monitor is easier to see and it is on an arm so I can get within the 4" of my nose which I require. It does have the disadvantage that the mouse pointer can take a bit of finding on occasions.
The Acer running Windows is not in the first flush of youth, 1997 I think.

Because the large monitor is fixed and the machines are on different desks there was no question of keeping the machines powered up during change over, but I probably did not turn the monitors off.

When I turned the Ubuntu on after switch-over it did not take account of the new monitor.

I hoipe that has cleared the fog a bit.

Malcolm

[oakridge]

I have chickened out, as they say, in the short term.

The solution outlined in the link was more than a little beyond my skill level so I must do some further reading. If anyone can push me in the right direction I would be most grateful. In the meantime I have pressed the 'aspect' button on the remote so the display is now better proportioned albeit not using the whole screen.

Thank you for all your help, er, so far.

Malcolm

[sudodus]

Did you try this: boot from the Ubuntu install CD/USB drive ?

You can also try Ubuntu from the Ubuntu install CD/USB drive while the computer is connected to the wide-screen monitor. Do not install at once, only run a live session to try Ubuntu! Then it is not pre-set to anything else, but starts from the beginning, and let us hope, finds the monitor and configures itself to it.

[oakridge]

I have run 'try Unbuntu' from the CD, but it sticks to 4:3 aspect ration. I have evern tried the Microsoft Method; turn absolutely everything off and restart.

I can live with the situation as is for a while and it is much better quality than the HP monitor.

There is another small problem which I think I will move onto for a while.

I am extremely grateful for all your help with this problem.

Malcolm

[sudodus]

If Ubuntu cannot cooperate with the hardware, feel free to try another linux distro. Knoppix is known to detect and cooperate with a lot of hardware, also aging hardware, so I suggest that you download and make a boot CD/DVD or USB drive with Knoppix and try if it will give you the full screen resolution with your wide screen monitor.

See http://www.knoppix.org/

[oakridge]

Yes, thank you for that, it looks very interesting. I will try it.

Malcolm

[oakridge]

Sorry for the long delay. I have experimented with Knoppix and I am now getting just a small margin at each side of the screen with no distortion, so this is quite satsifactory for me.

Thank you.

Malcolm

[sudodus]

Congratulations