ohnolawl's questions

I've been trying to set up an external monitor for a bit, finally got it mostly working except the resolution is off. My monitor's native res is 1600x900, which I finally got to show up in xrandr:

user:~$ xrandr
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 640 x 480, current 1024 x 768, maximum 1600 x 900
default connected 1024x768+0+0 0mm x 0mm
   1024x768        0.0* 
   800x600         0.0  
   640x480         0.0  
   1600x900       59.9

However when I try to change the resolution I get the following error:

user:~$ xrandr --output default --mode 1600x900
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
xrandr: Configure crtc 0 failed

When I plug the external monitor up to my netbook it isn't found. I restart with them connected and it displays on the external monitor, but in the wrong resolution, shifted ~100 pixels to the right, and in a slightly brownish hue. I've tried using xrandr but it always gives me an error stating that

xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default

The netbook's original monitor has the resolution of 1024x600 (16:9) and the monitor has 1600x900(16:9), but when I restart with them connected the default resolution of the netbook itself changes to 1024x768(4:3).

Does anyone know how to fix this problem? I have an integrated Intel chip if that helps.

When attempting to boot Ubuntu/Xubuntu/etc from a LiveCD, my screen displays "color scrambled" random pixels for a few seconds after the loading screen with the 5 dots, and then turns completely black with a few scattered red pixels. The OS continues to load and operate, but the red pixels continue to be displayed. They occasionally move around and flicker, a few trailing the mouse, but never dissipate. At first I thought it was just a quirk with booting from the CD, but after installing it alongside Windows 7 it still always boots with these red pixels. I've never had this occur before on Windows 7, so I'm sort of at a loss on what the issue is. Any advice on fixing the problem or providing more info would be much appreciated.