Second monitor breaks X, stays broken even after removing second monitor

[Shane Hansen]

I recently upgraded to from 8.10 to 9.04 (via a fresh install). When I attempted to plug my Compaq nx7400 laptop
into it's dock, I was prompted to "add a virtual monitor" by the display utility. After agreeing to this, and logging out and logging back in, my primary screen (a 1600x1024 laptop screen) had a line down the middle, and everything to the
left of the line was distorted (lots of horizontal lines/reverse video type effects). I tried undocking the laptop (and restarting X), reverting xorg.conf (and restarting X), reconfiguring xorg.conf (and restarting X) to no avail. Sometimes this effect was present on the login screen, sometimes it wasn't. Eventually I realized this problem did not affect
other users on this computer when they had a gnome session running. I tracked down a file in ~/.config named
monitors.xml which was causing the problem. Removing this file fixed the problem.

To summarize: adding a second monitor made irreversible changes to my setup that I couldn't fix using either the gui tools or by changing xorg.conf.
I expected either:
1. The dual monitor system would work or
2. I could use the System->Preferences->Display application to fix or revert any changes I had made.
3. Any changes that I couldn't revert in the gui would be revertible in xorg.conf

[Monkey (monkey-libre)]

I´ve assigned this bug to the xorg package.

Thank You for making Ubuntu better.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi ricardo-slacker,

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn` and `dmesg`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log (and maybe Xorg.0.log.old) file from after reproducing this issue. If you're using a custom /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that as well.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Shane Hansen (shanemhansen)]

I'm sorry, but that system is long gone. I can't help you out there anymore.

--Shane

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:25 PM, Bryce Harrington <<email address hidden>
> wrote:

> Hi ricardo-slacker,
>
>
> Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn` and `dmesg`, and attach your
> /var/log/Xorg.0.log (and maybe Xorg.0.log.old) file from after reproducing
> this issue. If you're using a custom /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that
> as well.
>
> [This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you
> inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]
>
>
> ** Tags added: needs-xorglog
>
> ** Tags added: needs-lspci-vvnn
>
> ** Changed in: xorg (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> --
> Second monitor breaks X, stays broken even after removing second monitor
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/371735
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Since the hardware is no longer available for doing troubleshooting with, we'll have to close the bug for now. However please feel free to reopen if you or anyone else has the same HW and can reproduce this issue using the latest development version of Ubuntu and is willing to do some troubleshooting with it.