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A friend gave me his old laptop because it's back-light gave out. Up until now I've been using it as a text based linux but I would like to revive it's ability to do graphics. With experimentation I found that under windows it's ability to output vga using the laptop's integrated external vga slot works just fine. As of yet however, I have to this day never been able to get the external vga to work under linux. It always gives me an out of range error.

The laptop in question is a presario 1500 The linux distro is cruchbash

I've read some instructions on how to fix that error in a few places but there is an issue. There is no such file as /etc/X11/xorg.conf nor any *.conf in that directory. Running the DPKG line doesn't help either.

Does anybody have the magic bullet to end this error with this laptop, or will I have to settle by install XP on it?

While I am not a complete linux noob, please treat me as one in your explination if that works.

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Is this an "out of range" error from the monitor? Do you get a display during bootup (from the BIOS etc) or no display at all? – pjc50 Jan 9 at 11:19
@pjc50 I get the message from the monitor. I do have a display during bootup but both monitors I have will give out once it boots passed the textmode – Mallow Jan 10 at 3:28
Do you get the text mode boot messages from Linux? In which case it really is going to be X, and the easiest thing in the short term is to stop it from starting X by removing the relevant symlink in /etc/rc2.d or /etc/rc3.d (look for 'gdm' or 'xdm') ; you can then hunt down the X config file (possibly by looking at the X logs in /var/log) – pjc50 Jan 10 at 9:24
@pjc50 Well since the laptop has no backlight I really can't tell. I had to use a lamp to see a login screen and password. (Meaning it boots in X) Then I had to install ssh before I could connect to it using my other computer in my network. From what I could tell the CrunchBang uses gdm, I didn't look for xdm. I'll try the logs tonight. – Mallow Jan 10 at 19:41

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