Comment 4 for bug 46874

Disabling the splash worked for me (GeForce FX 5700 Ultra) but I haven't tried setting the usplash resolution.

I've had this problem since I installed Breezy when it came out (on exactly the same hardware). I hadn't used ubuntu before then so I don't know if it was around before then (meaning is it an Ubuntu/uspash bug or an nvidia bug) but I don't remember this ever happening when I used Fedora (again, same hardware). Of course, YMMV.

When this was still broken for me, after powercycling the box the xserver would frequently not be able to run in any resolution other than 800x600. Trying to switch resolutions from the keyboard did nothing, and the Screen Resolution tool only showed 800x600 in the combobox. The xorg.conf seemed to still have all the right entries, but was apparently being ignored. I would also seem to get the wrong or vanilla/default session (no session-saved apps running). Sometimes several reboots were needed before I could get the other resolutions back; the proper session also seemed to return then as well.