screen resolution won't change

What video card?
What make and model system?
You haven't even stated the release of Ubuntu.....

How can anyone reply to this, you have given zero details.

We cannot see your system, you need to fill us in.....

graphics: Intel® 915G x86/MMX/SSE2 Intel® Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz × 2

lspci | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82915G/GV/910GL Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 04)

Description: Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty

 Hewlett-Packard compaq dc7100 CMT

and everything was fine, till I replaced the old video cord with a new one.

What was the old video card?

I never changed the video card. The only thing I changed was a new cord from the computer tower to the monitor. The old one was damaged in the move, everything was shifted to the yellow spectrum and I saw it was damaged at one end. so I went to the store and got a new one. Then after a restart, it went to ZOOM in your face mode, lol. Oh, I changed it when it was on and running but I don't think that would do anything. Or maybe? an update changed something it the setting? I did get an update when I restarted with the new cord and did the updates.

I was thinking today and wondering if there is a program aka add-on that would give me control of the screen settings, that would maybe fix it?? If you know of one, I would like to give it a try. or a command line that can change the setting?

Did you try the Intel driver installer. OmgUbuntu has a guide.

tried to download and got this
could not open the file unsupported file format tar;/tmp/mozilla blabla bla hit another wall. try again.

You will need this page:
https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/intel-graphics-installer-linux-1.2.0

What is the output of:

uname -a

Thanks

what happen, when I did, from the page you sent

~$ wget --no-check-certificate https://download.01.org/gfx/RPM-GPG-KEY-ilg -O - | \
> sudo apt-key add -
--2016-02-02 11:58:03-- https://download.01.org/gfx/RPM-GPG-KEY-ilg
Resolving download.01.org (download.01.org)... [sudo] password for rjsmith: 2001:428:7000:48d::ae6, 2001:428:7000:484::ae6, 23.4.140.152
Connecting to download.01.org (download.01.org)|2001:428:7000:48d::ae6|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1753 (1.7K)
Saving to: ‘STDOUT’

100%[======================================>] 1,753 --.-K/s in 0s

2016-02-02 11:58:04 (79.8 MB/s) - written to stdout [1753/1753]

Sorry, try again.
[sudo] password for rjsmith:
OK
rjsmith@rjsmith-desktop:~$ wget --no-check-certificate https://download.01.org/gfx/RPM-GPG-KEY-ilg -O - | \
> sudo apt-key add -wget --no-check-certificate https://download.01.org/gfx/RPM-GPG-KEY-ilg-2 -O - | \
> sudo apt-key add -
--2016-02-02 11:59:39-- https://download.01.org/gfx/RPM-GPG-KEY-ilg
Resolving download.01.org (download.01.org)... 2600:1408:17:192::ae6, 2600:1408:17:194::ae6, 23.4.140.152
Connecting to download.01.org (download.01.org)|2600:1408:17:192::ae6|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... gpg: Invalid option "-wget"
gpg: no valid OpenPGP data found.
200 OK
Length: 1753 (1.7K)
Saving to: ‘STDOUT’

 0% [ ] 0 --.-K/s in 0s

Cannot write to ‘-’ (Success).

output of
$ uname -a
Linux rjsmith-desktop 3.13.0-77-generic #121-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jan 20 10:50:59 UTC 2016 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

I was thinking I had used the ubuntu tweak janitor around the same time the screen went crazy, could it have wiped out some setting or files for the screen resolution. and given me this problem. I have found some others complaining about this problem on the web, not many, but there all on laptops and I'm not.

1. What is the output of
xrandr -q

2. Certain display settings are stored in the ~/.config/monitors.xml configuration file.
Deleting that file might help.
rm ~/.config/monitors.xml

~$ xrandr -q
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 768, maximum 32767 x 32767
VGA1 connected primary 1024x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
   1024x768 60.0*
   800x600 60.3 56.2
   848x480 60.0
   640x480 59.9
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

^^What does this tell us?

 rm ~/.config/monitors.xml
rm: cannot remove ‘/home/rjsmith/.config/monitors.xml’: No such file or directory

Looks like, it is not there, maybe that is the problem??

If you open system settings - display, you should see a picture similar to http://i.stack.imgur.com/rK9ep.png

What values do you have for "scale for menu and title bars" and for "scale all window contents..."?

If you change these settings, do you get a display that better meets your desires?

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