Hi Everyone.<div><br></div><div>First post...Just switched to this project after years of using another distro. It&#39;s been a few months now and I&#39;m on my third laptop; it&#39;s been a rough year ;) </div><div><br></div>
<div>Whenever possible, I like to connect to an external monitor. This worked very well in F16 on my Dell w/nvidia. Then the inverter went south and I was stuck with a Lenovo T60 w/Intel 945GM(I quickly learned I could no longer live without wide screen :) ). And that&#39;s where the fun started...</div>
<div><br></div><div>A yes. The infamous Intel 945 chipset...I waded through the whole sluggish feel issues of the &gt;2048 res issue. Then an update appeared to have addressed all my issues(no idea which one because the one that was supposed to fix it didn&#39;t). No matter what I&#39;d do, connecting any external monitor just worked; all was well.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Then more updates came and my setup broke again. That became a vicious circle for a while. Noticed F17 was out so I switched to that. Just like that everything stabilized(nice work on gnome-shell btw)...Then I inherited a Toshiba Tecra A8 --no 64bit extensions like my Dell but excited and couldn&#39;t resist switching nevertheless. Oddly enough, despite it being the exact same video chipset as the Lenovo I can&#39;t get any external monitor to work. Period. All the little tricks and tips I learned over the past few months aren&#39;t helping any.</div>
<div><br></div><div>So here are the symptoms: if I connect an external monitor(VGA) it won&#39;t light up at all. My LCD flickers and comes back to it&#39;s original state. Fine. The display settings reflect that one was connected and typically ids it properly. Again, fine. I then set an appropriate resolution and placement for both and hit apply. At this point the screen flickers again and my laptop comes back but the monitor does nothing(orange light). I can however, bring my cursor passed the LCD to where the monitor &quot;is&quot; but it&#39;s not lit so no joy there. If I let the time run out on the dialog everything goes back to normal. No harm no foul. If I play with any of the kbd combo keys to force the external monitor gnome-shell freaks out and I&#39;m forced to recover using the console. The only thing I can successfully accomplish is Fn+F5 resulting in the external monitor only-type setup. Recovering from that without restarting X is not possible. If I toggle back to my LCD the screen flickers and spins. Same goes for disconnecting the VGA cable. At this point I can&#39;t go back to the monitor either. I have no choice but to open a console and restart Gnome-Shell. The odd time I can&#39;t even do that and must power off(ouch! haven&#39;t had to do that in Linux for years)</div>
<div><br></div><div>Sorry about rambling on so much, just trying to give as many details as possible. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.</div><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">-- <br>
<br><div>Thanks,</div><div>Phil</div></div><div><br></div><div>references:</div><div><br></div><div>video chipset:</div><div><div>00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)</div>
<div>00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)</div></div><div><br clear="all"><div>packages:</div><div>gnome-shell 3.4.1</div><div>kernel 3.4.0-1.fc17.i686</div>

</div>