External Monitor Woes

I’ve been fiddling with xorg.conf for a while, and I’m pretty near giving up.

Initially, I wanted to do a dual-monitor config with the Intel chip in my laptop. After being frustrated about it not letting me have different resolutions, I read somewhere that the Intel driver won’t let you do that.

So I gave up on that.

I have a docking station. When I’m at home, my laptop is usually in the docking station, and I use the external monitor. But then, I’ll want to pop it out of the docking station, and this sometimes leaves me with nothing I can see.

If I change the resolution to a smaller one before removing the laptop from the docking station, it doesn’t restore the laptop screen.

Any ideas?

Oh, and in what may be a related issue, the blue fn key plus f4 doesn’t change monitor outputs.