Dual Screen Resolution

This is an odd problem - like most of my openSuse problems, a minor irritation. But it shouldn’t be there…

I’m using a laptop with an external monitor, all configured using the nVidia one-click drivers and am running KDE 3.5 on opensuse 11.0 32-bit. So far, so good. Everything works perfectly when the external screen is attached. BUT…when I boot the laptop on its own, the resolution changes - it appears to default to the external monitor’s lower resolution. This means that the carefully-arranged icons move about (despite being locked). The resolution changes to the correct one when the alptop is then restarted with the external monitor attached.

Now the really weird bit - this doesn’t happen when I log in as root!!! But when I check the nVidia settings, they appear to be identical whether I use root or my normal user login.

I have tried SaX in the past, but it destroys my video settings and I only get a standard black terminal screen.

Does anyone have any ideas? By the way, if you ask for any technical/system info, I’d appreciate some guidance on how to obtain it. I’m pretty experienced with PCs but don’t know the minutiae of hardware config.

Maybe nice for the test. But living dangerous! I hope you at least have the LAN (cable AND wireless) pulled out when you do this.
SDB:Login as root - openSUSE

Yes, I only use root sparingly. The problem is slightly worse - I have changed the screen name of some icons but they default to their original values on re-boot.

Also, the screensaver doesn’t come on, although it works when I test it.

It’s all very strange…

A long throw but: did you install SUSE with or without the external monitor connected? Someone else in a current thread found that it made a difference, with a vaguely similar problem.

No, I didn’t. If that’s the solution, I’ll live with the problem! Can you give me the link to the other post? I’ll take a look and see if there’s anything there that can help me.

Have a look at this: Suse 11.1 on M6400 & Dual 24" Monitors - Page 5 - openSUSE Forums