[NBLUG/talk] Kubuntu resets screen resolution to 640x480 after restart

[Lincoln Peters]

About a month ago, I set my parents up with a fresh installation of
Kubuntu Linux on their PC (formerly running Debian/Sarge with various
security updates, if I remember correctly).  Apparently, it was
working fine until yesterday, when they were expecting a power failure
and shut down the computer (my mom knows the proper way to shut down).
 When they turned it back on, the screen resolution had changed from
1280x1024 (its native resolution) to 640x480.

I no longer live in the north bay (I moved to Sunnyvale for a job
about five months ago), but I was able to talk to my mom over the
phone as she went through the KDE System Preferences in order to find
some clues.  Looking at the "Monitor" panel, I know that the video
card was identified correctly, but the monitor is showing up as a
generic plug-and-play monitor, with a maximum resolution of 640x480 (I
don't remember what she said the other settings were, but I'm not sure
they're important at the moment).  I don't know what it said before,
but I do know that it had been running at 1280x1024.


If I could stop by their house, I could probably go into their xorg
configuration and set everything up correctly, but it's almost a
two-hour drive in each direction, and I really don't think I could
talk either of them through editing xorg.conf by hand over the phone.
Does anyone know why this might have happened, and/or an easier way to
fix it than editing xorg.conf by hand?

The PC is a custom-built machine I assembled years ago (it's been
upgraded in various ways over the years), and as of when I installed
Kubuntu about a month ago, it's running the latest version with all
the updates.

Thanks in advance.


-- 
Lincoln Peters
<anfrind at gmail.com>