Problems with NVIDIA Optimus Card/Intel Sandy Bridge

Question

I have a laptop MSI GE620DX (Intel Core i5-2410M, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M, 1366x768 HD) with Ubuntu 11.10 and Windows 7 in multiboot. But I have problem with screen resoution in Ubuntu - only 1024x768 or 800x600. Ubuntu didn't offer proprietary drivers in settings and I installed them manually: mvidia-common, nvidia-current (290.10) and nvidia-settings (290.10). When I started

sudo nvidia-settings

Control Panel said You do not appear to be using the NVIDIA X driver. Please edit your X configuration file (just run nvidia-xconfig as root), and restart the X server. I wrote

sudo nvidia-xconfig

But terminal said sudo: nvidia-xconfig: command not found

What can I do for change screen resolution?

P. S. My full hardware list (lshw): Here .txt

P. P. S. Logs of xorg:

grep -E "EE|WW" /var/log/Xorg.0.log
    (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[    23.575] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/" does not exist.
[    23.576] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/" does not exist.
[    23.576] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi" does not exist.
[    23.576] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi" does not exist.
[    23.653] (II) Loading extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
[    23.657] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev
[    23.691] (WW) VESA(0): Unable to estimate virtual size
[    23.691] (WW) VESA(0): No valid modes left. Trying less strict filter...
[    23.691] (WW) VESA(0): Unable to estimate virtual size
[    23.691] (WW) VESA(0): No valid modes left. Trying aggressive sync range...
[    23.691] (WW) VESA(0): Unable to estimate virtual size

P. P. P. S. My Ubuntu starts only with nomodeset option, because without this option Ubuntu doesn't want to start.

P. P. P. P. S. And in /etc/X11/ I can't find xorg.conf. It's strange.

Please help.

Answer 1

You laptop has a hybrid card, you have a intel + nvidia card running in your system, the drivers you are installing for you nvidia are not working correctly because they are not being loaded on startup.

You Intel card is running as primary so you have 2 options:

1) If you BIOS allows to turn off the Intel card and leave the nVidia one running then the drivers will work correctly;

2) Use software that enables you to use some functions of your nVidia card, its called Bumblebee and its largelly discussed on use/installation, etc, on the site.