Dual boot via mint4win, now my screen is off-kilter!

[yanom]

So I installed Mint through Mint4Win. Booted it up. Pretty sweet distro although i'm having this problem:
boot up the first time and see this:

uhoh. there's a big black bar on the left side of my screen, and the right side of the desktop can't be seen at all! Fortunately, my monitor has an "Auto adjust" function:

that fixes it, and I go about Minting. But then I power off, and next time I boot into Windows 7 instead of Mint.
uhoh, there's a big black bar on the right side of my screen, and the left side can't be seen at all!

I have to use Auto correct to get it back to looking normal:


but, if i boot back into Mint later, the problem that appears in the first image is back! and i have to auto correct again! Does anyone know how to fix this? My graphics card is:
AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series

[xenopeek]

Are you using a VGA cable to connect the computer to the monitor, instead of a DVI-D cable?

[Oscar799]

Moved here by moderator

[yanom]

Are you using a VGA cable to connect the computer to the monitor, instead of a DVI-D cable?

yes. why?

[yanom]

why does the vga cable matter anyway?

[xenopeek]

The VGA cable matters, because this sends an analogue signal to the monitor while both your graphics card and monitor are digital. This means, the digital information in the graphics card "this pixel at exactly this location, is exactly this color" is translated first to a analogue signal wave and at the monitor end this has to be decoded back again (somehow) to the same digital information--which isn't possible due to loss of information from the translating back and forth to analogue and due to having lost information from signal interference with other cables and devices near it. Digital has the advantage of having error correction built in, so it doesn't suffer from signal interference at all.

VGA cables are meant to be used with CRT monitors (the old, big bulky ones), because CRT monitors actually work directly from the analogue signal wave. But you should use digital signal for LCD monitors. It know why the analogue signal wave is causing your image to shift, but there is nothing you can do about it but switch to a digital signal If you do want to know the difference between CRT and LCD monitors, this is a good article.

So go out, buy a DVI-D cable for a few bucks (the cheapest is good enough; a digital signal either passes through or it doesn't, the cable quality plays no role in anything other than the longevity of the cable), and in addition to solving this problem your image quality should increase and the picture should be more stable.

[yanom]

...ok. I'm getting a new monitor soon anyway.

[xenopeek]

...ok. I'm getting a new monitor soon anyway.

Uhm, it is not a problem of the monitor. You are just using the wrong kind of cable If you use that cable on your next monitor, it will be the same blurry unstable picture, and again with possibly shifted from center.