Okay. To make the change I think you want to make you have to edit lines in the [screen] section of /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 (make a backup!!!).

Mine was set so that "1280x1024" was the maximum (each is listed for the available colour depths) I removed this and the other odd one (1152x864) and left "1024x768" - when I rebooted, KDE came up in 1024x768 - correctly, with menu showing etc.

I'm just about to put it back.....

Stu.....