[SOLVED] Display does not fill the screen

[patriot56]

Hello Forum.
When viewing the Desktop, I am not able to see the last 3" (or so) of the screen.
This problem occurred after I swapped out my Radeon X300 Graphics card with a PNY GeForce4 MX440se 64MB SDR PCI with TV-Out & RCA Video Card.

I removed the PNY GeForce4 card and re-installed the Radeon X300 card then restarted the computer and that is when I noticed that the last 3" of the display was missing, as well as the "Screenlets" that I had on my desktop.

I have searched the Linux Mint Forums and Posted this issue there. It was suggested that I search the xorg.conf Folder/Files and removed all that contained the entry Nvidia.
This did not solve the issue and beyond that, I don't know what else to do.

I am using Linux Mint 10 x86 on an AMD 64bit computer with 2 GIGs of RAM.
If any further information is needed please let me know.

Any help will be gratefully and enthusiastically accepted.

[EDIT] I just thought of something else that may (or may not) be important.
The Radeon X300 Graphics adapter that was originally installed in the computer when I installed Linux Mint 10 is a PCIE card while the PNY GeForce4 MX440se 64MB is a PCI card.
Just thought I should add this information.

[MASONTX]

Try going into system>administration>system monitor and manually adjust the setting to the proper resolution. Also try system>administration>additional drivers to make sure you have the proper driver loaded. Good luck!

[elija]

Does your monitor have an "auto-adjust" feature on it's configuration menus? This will sometimes sort out strangely sized displays

[patriot56]

@MASONTX
Thank you for your responce.
I tried to adjust the resolution manually-no joy.
All that happens is that the resolution grows or shrinks as I change the resolution settings up or down. The bottom 3" of my screen is still black.
Anything else that you can think of that I can try would be really appreciated.
Thanks again mate.

[patriot56]

@elija
Thank you for the post. I tried your suggestion and selected the "auto-adjust" from the monitors configuration menu but it didn't work. I even reverted to "Factory Default" settings: that didn't work either.

I believe that the problem lies in the Kernel. I think what happened was that when I switched the ATI video card with the Nvidia card the Kernel saw that there was a new video card in the machine and installed the drivers for it.
The problem (I believe) is that when I switched back to the ATI card it somehow hosed the Kernel module for the video drivers. If that is even possible. I don't know, it's just a hunch. I am so new to Linux that very little of this makes any since to me.
Thanks for your help.

[elija]

So we've eliminated a possible easier fix or two which is both good and bad!

Run the following commands on the terminal and copy / paste the output here. The first one will show what graphics card is being picked up as in use, which should be your ATi

lspci | grep -i vga

and then we look at what drivers you have running with

lsmod

[patriot56]

elija.
Here's the output from the lspci | grep -i vga command:

lspci | grep -i vga
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]

And this is the output from the lsmod command:

Module                  Size  Used by
ufs                    73069  0 
qnx4                    6877  0 
hfsplus                71344  0 
hfs                    41250  0 
minix                  25303  0 
ntfs                   95015  0 
msdos                   6436  0 
jfs                   171034  0 
xfs                   693150  0 
exportfs                3449  1 xfs
reiserfs              225942  0 
nls_iso8859_1           3261  2 
nls_cp437               4931  2 
vfat                    9201  2 
fat                    48240  2 msdos,vfat
binfmt_misc             6599  1 
ipt_REJECT              2004  1 
ipt_LOG                 4490  11 
xt_limit                1394  7 
xt_tcpudp               1927  7 
ipt_addrtype            1611  4 
dm_crypt               11385  0 
xt_state                1014  6 
snd_emu10k1_synth       5136  0 
snd_emux_synth         29012  1 snd_emu10k1_synth
snd_seq_virmidi         4193  1 snd_emux_synth
snd_seq_midi_emul       5547  1 snd_emux_synth
snd_usb_audio          86704  1 
snd_emu10k1           131818  3 snd_emu10k1_synth
snd_util_mem            3118  2 snd_emux_synth,snd_emu10k1
snd_hwdep               5040  3 snd_emux_synth,snd_usb_audio,snd_emu10k1
snd_intel8x0           25632  2 
snd_ac97_codec         99227  2 snd_emu10k1,snd_intel8x0
snd_usbmidi_lib        17413  1 snd_usb_audio
ac97_bus                1014  1 snd_ac97_codec
ip6table_filter         1275  1 
ip6_tables             11764  1 ip6table_filter
snd_pcm                71475  4 snd_usb_audio,snd_emu10k1,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec
snd_seq_midi            4588  0 
snd_seq_midi_event      6047  2 snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq                47174  5 snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_midi_emul,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
nf_nat_irc              1168  0 
nf_conntrack_irc        3348  1 nf_nat_irc
snd_rawmidi            17783  4 snd_seq_virmidi,snd_emu10k1,snd_usbmidi_lib,snd_seq_midi
snd_timer              19067  3 snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm,snd_seq
nf_nat_ftp              1398  0 
snd_seq_device          5744  5 snd_emu10k1_synth,snd_emu10k1,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi
nf_nat                 16289  2 nf_nat_irc,nf_nat_ftp
nf_conntrack_ipv4      10783  8 nf_nat
nf_defrag_ipv4          1117  1 nf_conntrack_ipv4
gspca_sonixj           25836  0 
nf_conntrack_ftp        5361  1 nf_nat_ftp
nf_conntrack           63258  7 xt_state,nf_nat_irc,nf_conntrack_irc,nf_nat_ftp,nf_nat,nf_conntrack_ipv4,nf_conntrack_ftp
gspca_main             23644  1 gspca_sonixj
iptable_filter          1302  1 
snd                    49006  23 snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_usb_audio,snd_emu10k1,snd_hwdep,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_usbmidi_lib,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
psmouse                59033  0 
ip_tables              10460  1 iptable_filter
videodev               43098  1 gspca_main
soundcore                880  1 snd
x_tables               15921  10 ipt_REJECT,ipt_LOG,xt_limit,xt_tcpudp,ipt_addrtype,xt_state,ip6table_filter,ip6_tables,iptable_filter,ip_tables
v4l1_compat            13359  1 videodev
snd_page_alloc          7120  3 snd_emu10k1,snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
serio_raw               4022  0 
emu10k1_gp              1472  0 
i2c_nforce2             5179  0 
gameport                9327  2 emu10k1_gp
joydev                  8735  0 
ppdev                   5556  0 
lp                      7342  0 
parport_pc             26058  1 
k8temp                  3132  0 
parport                31492  3 ppdev,lp,parport_pc
dm_raid45              81721  0 
xor                    15136  1 dm_raid45
btrfs                 489451  0 
zlib_deflate           19266  1 btrfs
crc32c                  2531  1 
libcrc32c                887  1 btrfs
usbhid                 36882  0 
hid                    67742  1 usbhid
radeon                825934  2 
ttm                    56633  1 radeon
drm_kms_helper         30200  1 radeon
drm                   168054  4 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper
firewire_ohci          21106  0 
firewire_core          46643  1 firewire_ohci
sata_nv                19420  0 
crc_itu_t               1383  1 firewire_core
pata_amd                8746  2 
forcedeth              49433  0 
floppy                 54311  0 
agpgart                32011  2 ttm,drm
i2c_algo_bit            5168  1 radeon
usb_storage            40172  2

By the way elija, thank you for such a quich response.
I am currently at work so my response may be a little slow but I will respond as I have the opportunity.

[elija]

I can't see anything immediately wrong there; there don't appear to be any nvidia drivers lying around. I don't have an ATi card so I'm afraid that I may be a bit fuzzy on the details but the approach I would take if this happened with Nvidia is to:

open a terminal and run the following commands

cd /etc/X11
sudo mv xorg.conf xorg.saved

and then reboot. In the first command, that's a capital X and two ones. This will backup your display configuration and then the reboot will force Mint to use a default configuration. This won't be the proprietary drivers but will hopefully use the whole screen.

I would then use the Nvidia control panel to configure things up again. I hope that ATi provide one of those as they do make things easy.

This is kind of reaching the edges of my knowledge now, so hopefully a real guru will be along shortly

[patriot56]

Thanks elija.
I will give this a try and then post the results.
If anything good has come from this it is that I am leaning Linux bits and pieces at a time. :o)

I'll let you know what happens.

[patriot56]

I ran into a problem with the second command.
When I executed the command, sudo my xorg.conf xorg.saved this is what I got:

sudo: my: command not found

Did I do something wrong? Do I need to do this as root?