Comment 8 for bug 529387

Hi Chewit, yes if you could run 'apport-collect 529387', that'll automatically attach all the info needed.

Thank you for taking the time to write such a clear and concise bug report. From your description I can make some pretty good guesses about what's going on. Every monitor has a circuit embedded in it which communicates the device's capabilities (refresh rates, resolutions, etc.) to the computer when asked. It is not uncommon for this information to be incorrectly encoded by the hardware manufacturer. For example, we've seen some manufactures specify the monitor's dimensions in cm's instead of in mm's, or putting in plain old typos. In some cases, for whatever reason, Linux is not able to retrieve the data. This data from the monitor is called EDID. My guess is that something is wrong with your monitor's EDID or X.org's ability to retrieve it.

Unfortunately none of the files attached here include the EDID so I can't verify this. Sometimes this is included in the output of 'xrandr --auto' or listed in the Xorg.0.log file itself. In your case neither happened. There is also a pair of tools in the read-edid package to retrieve this - you run it as "get-edid | parse-edid". A lot of times this just shows 'EDID fail' though so it might not be helpful.

Another angle to try would be to uninstall -nvidia. With Lucid we've brought in an alternative open source video driver for NVIDIA hardware called -nouveau. This uses the linux kernel to retrieve the EDID and configure the resolution modes (this is referred to as Kernel Mode-Setting, or KMS). I doubt this will do any better with your hardware but it's worth a shot. KMS is considered the "way forward" and is where developer efforts are being focused.

Probably the easiest way to test -nouveau would be to boot Lucid via a LiveCD. If you choose to test it on your installed system, note that you'll need to uninstall (and maybe purge) your old -nvidia installation. See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting for a page about conflicts between nvidia and nouveau.

Finally, I have to ask... why are you sticking with such an old video monitor? 1024x768 is such a limited resolution. If you've been able to upgrade to newer CPUs and graphics, why not a new monitor while you're at it?