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I have the following problem: I have a laptop (open) with an external monitor connected. After boot, everything is perfect - the laptop screen is on the left of the external one and both resolutions are max and so on.

However, If I use xrandr to, for example, turn off the laptop screen

xrandr --output LVDS1 --off

The system freezes completely - both screens turn black, I can only see a mouse pointer on the external screen. (It doesn't move) All keyboard shortcuts to kill X and so on don't work, and I have to hardreset the laptop.

I can't find anything in the logfiles neither of Xorg nor in the system messages.

Here is some output that might be helpful:

$ xrandr -q
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3286 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
LVDS1 connected 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 309mm x 174mm
   1366x768       60.0*+   40.0  
   1024x768       60.0  
   800x600        60.3     56.2  
   640x480        59.9  
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI3 connected 1920x1080+1366+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 509mm x 286mm
   1920x1080      60.0*+
   1280x1024      75.0     60.0  
   1152x864       75.0  
   1024x768       75.1     60.0  
   800x600        75.0     60.3  
   640x480        75.0     60.0  
   720x400        70.1  
DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

I have an intel arrandale chip, the i915 kernel module is loaded as well as KMS. Turning off modesetting at boot totally screws up my resolution and so on.

I googled a little bit and found, that freezes using xrandr are known, but I didn't find any solution yet.

share|improve this question
It's a bug, and your best bet is to contact the authors of your video driver (see if they have a mailing list) and ask them how you can help (e.g. by running the driver in a debugging mode and collecting crash information). – Gilles Jun 3 '11 at 12:40
It's definitely a video driver bug, I agree. I've seen many-a-laptop with similar issues. Many times drivers work the first time, but not later times, etc. – Wes Hardaker Jun 3 '11 at 13:47
Any updates? Was the bug fixed in new versions? – Stéphane Gimenez Feb 15 '12 at 18:58
I have the same problem with nVidia GT420. Please let me know if you were able to solve the issue. – Junaid Dec 2 '12 at 23:41

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