Xrandr to an external monitor

[Fatalexception]

Hi guys, nice to be here.
I installed LXDE on Friday, and I have to say I'm impressed. I've tried Ubuntu and Mint in the past and didn't like them so much. LXDE is really user friendly for a Linux system.

Few little niggles which I've battled with over the weekend and ironed out, but one issue is defeating me.

On Win7 when I plug an external monitor into my laptop, I click detect, and it sends the image to the screen @ 1024 (1440 on the laptop), and resizes the image so I can see everything - entire desktop.
Now I've managed to get LXDE to send the image to the ext-monitor at 1024, but it won't show everything. I've tried every conceivable setting in xrandr, but it won't fit the screen. I tried the NVidia server, and that does the same thing, albeit with more settings.

I've tried many sites which go through adding resolutions to xrandr and sheesh, they're long winded and didn't work for me.
Any tips or guides?

[seppalta]

Install Arandr. It will do all the work for you. http://lxlinux.com/#14

[Fatalexception]

Ah right, thanks, I'll give that a try

[drooly]

arandr would have been my advice, too.
it gives a nice graphical representation of the current settings.
keep in mind that at first the monitors are most likely to be "on top of each other", but you can drag them to be side-by-side, and adjust resolutions.
if that works you have to figure out how to apply these settings at login, but i guess that's covered in the lxlinux article.