Problems.......

Hey everyone, new to linux here. I just recently did a HD install to a very old Toshiba Satellite notebook and I'm having some issues.

I have 3 big issues.

1) My monitor is all messed up. the whole viewing area is a 3inchX3inch box, and I can't change the resolution at all. when I was using the live CD I would remedy this by inputting: xmodule=fbdev screen= 1024x768. But I would like to change it to be able to have it full screen all the time as default.

2) My keyboard appears to have been picked up wrong. Shift control and all of the letters and everything work but for some reason some of the other keys are misplaced. If I hold shift and try to make a question mark, a "-" comes in it's place. If I try and type this: ")" I get this instead "(".

3) trying to modify my XF86Config-4 file but I can't save since I don't have permission from the root, and I can't get permission from the root becuase I don't know how. (I thought I'd easily be able to find this using search in the forums but for some reason I wasn't able to)

Anyone have a few solutions to my problems? Thanks in advance!