Thanks for your reply, its just vga (its a crt monitor) and seams to detect correctly sometimes (i think this is where the problem may be). read the log file, it seams to probe and fail a bunch of settings (probably incorrectly) it also thinks it has 1mb of dedicated memory, which seam a tad odd to be fair.... but it would appear to be fixed. ideas where to look? would you like to see part of the log (its a tad larger then i would want to poke in an email)

Cheers

Andrew

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Wazzä <wazza@clear.net.nz> wrote:

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 2:34 PM, Andrew Crosby <electrogeek@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am having trouble with a ubuntu 10.4 install, the problem is sometimes it
> detects the display, and changes to its native res (something like
> 2048x1560) however other times it doesn't and then default to 1024x768, this

1680x1050?

> wouldn't be a problem if it just stuck with one all the time, but it seams
> to take liberties about when it chooses with res to go with, and as this is
> a pc for my parents, it is somewhat annoying, any ideas?
>

How are you cabled into the monitor from the PC?  Any KVM switches in
the way?  DVI or VGA cables?

DVI can be a "better" choice, as the monitor information is sent down
the cables to the graphics board.  (Hence why a KVM switch upsets the
balance.  VGA cables suffer even more, as the information can be sent
through the cable, but it seems pot luck as to whether the monitor
manufacturer and video card manufacturer decided to support that
feature)

> (PS, its a fairly boring intel on board graphics chipset)

How is the video RAM specified?  Is it dynamically shared with Main
memory. It can be beneficial to "fix" the amount of video ram used in
the Xorg.conf (or equivalent)

Failing all that, have you looked at /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see what
error messages are coming out?

Cheers,