Q I am using Ubuntu 6.06 on a Compaq Presario SR1720NX and am very new to this. When I try to add an Epson Stylus CX4800 printer using Gnome CUPS, the bottom of the screen, which should show Cancel, Back and Forward or Apply buttons, is missing. I can use the Enter key instead of Forward, but on screen 3 I can't find a way to activate the Apply button.
A This would appear to be a problem with your screen resolution. If Ubuntu's installer was unable to get accurate information about your graphics card and monitor, it would have defaulted to a safe 640x480 resolution. This is too small to display the full Add Printer window. A quick fix is to hold down the Alt key, click in the middle of the window and drag it upwards to expose the buttons. Alt+clicking means you can drag from any part of the window, so you can move it upwards even if that means moving the titlebar off the screen. This will allow you to add your printer, but does not fix the cause.
To change the screen resolution to something more suitable, use Preferences > Screen Resolution from the System menu. This should offer all the resolutions that are suitable for your combination of graphics hardware and display. If only 640x480 is offered, your hardware was not identified during installation. The Device Manager, from the System > Administration menu, will show you if your graphics card was identified correctly - it should be an ATI Radeon XPress 200 IGP on your computer. To change the settings for graphics card or monitor, you should run dexconf to probe the hardware and write a configuration file. It is wise to back up the existing configuration file first, so run this in a terminal:
cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf ~ sudo dexconf
This will generate a new configuration file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf after making a copy of the original in your home directory. Once you have done this, you will need to restart the X server. This can be done from the command line, but as you're a new user, restarting the computer is probably the easiest way to do it. If 640x480 is still the only resolution available to you, you will need to edit the xorg.conf file. Without seeing your existing configuration, it is impossible to say what needs changing. If you get this far and still cannot get past 640x480, I recommend you ask on our Help forum at www.linuxformat.co.uk, including the contents of /etc/X11/xorg.conf, the output from running lspci -v and details of your monitor.