I have a laptop (Sony Vaio E series), with an external monitor attached to it. By default, it puts the two screens in mirror. I don't like mirror mode for various reasons and want to change it (turn the laptop screen off and the external monitor on). However, whenever I go into the built in monitor configuration tool, take it off of mirror mode, turn the laptop screen off, and hit apply, both screens go black.

It worked fine in ubuntu 10.10, but not in ubuntu 11.04. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this? Thank you.

Edit: As requested, this should show what video card I have:

$ lspci | grep 'VGA'

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

Edit 2: Some more information:

$ xrandr -q

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 768, maximum 8192 x 8192

LVDS1 connected 1024x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm

   1366x768       59.9 +

   1360x768       59.8     60.0  

   1024x768       60.0* 

   800x600        60.3     56.2  

   640x480        59.9  

VGA1 connected 1024x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 338mm x 270mm

   1280x1024      60.0 +   75.0  

   1024x768       75.1     70.1     60.0* 

   832x624        74.6  

   800x600        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2  

   640x480        72.8     75.0     66.7     60.0  

   720x400        70.1  

HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

Edit3: (Again, as requested by the comments)

I typed in:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --off

And the laptop screen turned off just fine, with no ill side effects (okay, my computer froze up once, but that may have been for another reason). Here is the results of running:

DISPLAY=:0.0 xrandr -q

-

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 768, maximum 8192 x 8192

LVDS1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

   1366x768       59.9 +

   1360x768       59.8     60.0

   1024x768       60.0

   800x600        60.3     56.2

   640x480        59.9

VGA1 connected 1024x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 338mm x 270mm

   1280x1024      60.0 +   75.0

   1024x768       75.1     70.1     60.0*

   832x624        74.6

   800x600        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2

   640x480        72.8     75.0     66.7     60.0

   720x400        70.1

HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

So this seems to be working (although the resolution on the VGA is still not at the (proffered) 1280x1024. Anyway, still thank you for your help so far.