well, i booted into Knoppix and entered the cheat code
knoppix screen=1024x768
so that it will know that is what i want my screen resolution to be, but it had no effect. i was still being cheated out of my monitor.
So i went back into win2k, made this post, and then later booted into Red Hat and i got my screen back. So WTF? I dont know, maybe it had something to do with the cheatcode. I will boot into Knoppix later today to see if i get the same problem...