How do I fix a monitor resolution problem?

[Brian Kelsay]

>> This sounds like Red Hat's famous hardware detection scheme.  It is horribly
>> buggy, broken, and even makes MS Windows hardware detection look good.  
>> Disable this feature from your boot services.  Its amazing what settings
>> it can come up with.

>I agree. I used Red Hat for about a year and continually had problems
>with its hardware detection (specifically in the area of IDE and SCSI
>drives). It was a real pain, for the most part.

>> The description of your hardware sounds like it has been "supported" for a
>> few years at least.  A good minimalistic Linux distribution should have no 
>> problems working with it. 

>So, Michael, I don't know if you are in a position to swap distros. I
>just recently switched from Red Hat to Slackware 9.1, and am nothing but
>_pleased_ with Slack. The longer you use your current distro on your
>machine, the more of a hassle it will be to change to another one. I
>spent about 48 hours straight reconfiguring my system when I changed out
>Red Hat and installed Slack. The install was fairly easy (Slack website
>has a ton of helps on it), but getting everything set back up the way I
>had it... I'm still not there. Lots of tweaking to do.

>So, maybe it's killing a fly with a sledgehammer... but, could you
>consider a switching distros? 

>-Greg

If this is the Michael I'm thinking it is, he is doing support for someone else's company.  Distro 
switch is not practical especially if he knows nothing to even less about Slackware.  This is like 
using a sledge to get the lid off a jar of pickles.
The best thing would be to make a suggestion of some commands to solve or investigate the problem.  
Red Hat's hardware detection is fine, I've never had any problems with standard hardware, even ATI 
cards as someone mentioned.  As always investigate your hardware before you install Linux checking 
the various online databases and the hardware vendors website to see if they provide drivers.

If Ctl+Alt+Bksp doesn't work to shutdown the Xserver, then try the Ctl+Alt+f1 thru f6 trick to get 
a console.  As last resort, do a dirty shutdown and issue a Linux single or Linux 3 to change 
runlevel from boot: prompt.  Then under Red Hat you can try "Xconfigurator" from the command line.  
 The X HAS to be capitalized.  you could also, try "Xf86config".  These are tools I've used to fix 
this situation under Red Hat 5 - 9.

There, see how easy that was.  Useful info, clear concise and while it may not solve his particular 
problem, it should lead him in the right direction.  you could also provide a link to a HOWTO or a 
Red Hat document indicating the procedure.

Linux, the anti-FUD.

Brian Kelsay