[Techtalk] resolution woes

[maria at shadlen.org]

hello there,

I am trying to fix my resolution, which seems to be currently set too
high. I am using debian lenny, so dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg seems to
do nothing for screen resolution. I tried to use xrandr, which is what
seemed to be the right thing to do according to my google search, but ran
into this:

sarah:~# xrandr -s "1280x1024"
Size 1280x1024 not found in available modes
sarah:~# xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200
default connected
   1600x1200       0.0
   1280x1024      76.0
   1024x768       76.0
   800x600        73.0
   640x480        73.0
   640x400         0.0
   320x400         0.0
   320x240         0.0
   320x200         0.0

Obviously, it should have found it, and I'm not sure what I've done wrong.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Btw, if I log into x and try to
configure from screen resolution preferences, I get no resolutions in the
drop down menu.

thanks,
maria