VGA cable alters display

I'm posting this in the Linux beginner's forum because I'm a newbie and hope there's a simple solution. When I plug a VGA cable into my AAO and boot up, the desktop image is too large to fit on the screen. I can't see the settings control, it's off the bottom of the screen, no way to reach it. The only way to fix it is to reboot without the cable. This happens consistently, whether or not the cable is connected to my external monitor. I'm using my system brand new, as it came. I haven't reconfigured anything or installed new software.

Has anyone else experienced this (or not)?

Thanks for any feedback.

 

I guess no one else has this problem but I solved it in case you do.

I have an Acer 19" Acer X193W LCD monitor connected to my AAO Linpus Lite machine via a VGA cable. When I boot up, the image on the built-in monitor does not fit and there's no way to navigate around the entire desktop. The bottom half and about one third of the right side are cut off.

1) press Fn F5 and the external monitor goes dark with an "input not supported" message
2) press Fn F5 again and the external monitor says "cable not connected", while the built-in monitor now shows the proper display
3) press Fn F5 for the third time and now the desktop fits in both monitors. At this point I click on "Settings", "Display Settings", then "Show my desktop only on the external display"
4) now there is a list of available resolutions, I set it to 1280x768 @ 60

It works great after that. I had to figure this out myself, the manufacturer's technical support line was most unhelpful

 

The Xserver (which handles all GUI stuff) has some shortcuts that might have done the trick as well.
<ctrl><alt><+> and <ctrl><alt><-> (control-alt-plus and control-alt-minus) cycle trough the resolutions defined in the xorg.conf configuration file. So you can try them the next time which might save you some key-presses.

You can also try <ctrl><alt><backspace> which restarts the Xserver (without restarting the computer)

Not tested as I don't have an AA1 at hand.

 

I tried the <ctrl><alt> shortcuts but no luck. I thought maybe it was because I hadn't enabled the "Advanced Menu", but that didn't make a difference. Funny, no one else has experienced this problem? I like the AAO setup with an external monitor, it has replaced my home computer.