VGA Cable

So, I went out and grabbed a new VGA cable because my old one finally kicked the bucket—every time I move it, the whole screen starts shifting colors like some weird psychedelic trip. I headed down to the store and picked up a General Electric one, $20. I get home, plug it in, and wouldn't you know it? I can't even set my resolution. My usual setup is 1400x900, but that option just isn't there. Plus, now I have to reboot the entire PC every single time I plug this thing in just to get a signal.
What am I supposed to be looking for when buying a monitor cable? Apparently, "just give me a VGA cable" isn't a foolproof strategy, because clearly this one is junk. I walked into the shop, asked for a basic cable, they handed me this, and now my screen looks nothing like what I'm used to... absolute headache.

Old cable
new cable

Hmm, I’m not quite sure how it could even offer a higher resolution than what your monitor actually supports natively. Maybe try doing a clean reinstall of your graphics card drivers? Might fix things up..

So I went ahead and installed those drivers, but nope—nothing changed. Still stuck in the same spot... I can't even select the 1440x900 resolution

In the first screenshot, you've got your Dell monitor correctly selected above the resolution settings, but in the second one, it's defaulted to that generic Plug and Play driver from Wins. Just switch it over to your actual monitor manually.
It sounds like you're using a cable with some missing pins—specifically the ones meant to send data about the monitor type back to the PC. It’s technically fine under those old VGA standards, but you'll just have to handle the monitor settings yourself...

Yeah, but my actual monitor isn't even showing up—all I've got to work with here is this one option: Generic Non-Plug and Play Monitor

Just go ahead and manually install the monitor drivers yourself.

Ethan Davis58 said:Just try installing the monitor drivers manually.

So, my GPU drivers are totally up to date, right? I went to grab the monitor drivers from this site—http://support.dell.com/download.asp...VXozz0bFSKnotc—but all it’s trying to install is some weird Akamai net session thing... now I'm stuck wondering if that's even what I need. I checked Device Manager and it just shows "Generic Non-Plug and Play Monitor"... typical.