800 X 600 cannot select higher resolution

Well, this is new.

In the middle of troubleshooting all of the other issues with Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, I rebooted and it now comes up with a resolution of 800 X 600, and there are no other resolutions available.

I've already re-installed the nvidia-current driver twice.

mobo: M4A89GTD-PRO 
Bios: 2101 
cpu:  AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 645 Processor 
ram:  6111188 kB 
hdd:  ATA OCZ-VERTEX3 
gpu:  GeForce GT 440 
Mouse / keyboard: M510, K350 single unifying receiver 
Linux 3.13.0-43-generic (x86_64) Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS

edit - I should point out, this is a brand new installation from a fresh download. I have not changed or altered or installed anything at all beyond running software updater a few times, installing the latest nvidia-current driver, and doing a sudo-apt update a few times. But everything is exactly as it was installed with all of the defaults.

edit - based on a recommendation below, I've completely wiped the proprietary driver and replaced it with the xorg.edgers driver. Technically, it corrected the problem, so this is solved.

Solution 1:

Now that you've added the xorg-edgers PPA, you have a lot of drivers to choose from:

apt-cache search nvidia-3 | sort

Currently I'm running the nvidia-settings --version

nvidia-settings:  version 346.22  (buildd@lgw01-10)  Tue Dec  9 08:42:45 UTC 2014

and it seems to be running 10°C cooler (+/- 18°F) then the nvidia-340, so try that one first.

Steps to follow:

1. Disable the nVIDIA card in the BIOS and reboot (so that any old drivers lingering around can be removed successfully)
2. sudo apt-get install nvidia-346
3. sync
4. sudo shutdown -h now (full shut down as soft reboot gave me a problem)
5. Turn on the computer, enable the NVidia card in the BIOS and reboot (For sake of completeness: here I had to do another full shutdown)
6. Check the driver version with nvidia-settings --version only! The "Additional Drivers" doesn't show the correct settings.
7. System settings - Displays should now allow you to take the highest resolution (if not already detected automatically)

That's it!

If your card still gives you a walk down memory lane (Windows 95 behaviour), go to step 2 and try the next (lower) version using the same system