Booting laptop in safe mode with external monitor

I'm running a Dell Inspiron XPS with Windows XP SP2. A few months ago, the laptop was dropped and the monitor was ruined. I've been using it with an external monitor ever since. Now, however, I need to boot to safe mode so I can run System Restore. But no matter what I do, I can't get the external monitor to kick in so I can see what I'm doing.

Normally, the external monitor kicks in automatically as soon as the laptop asks for my username and password during startup. Anything to that point is just flickering lights on the broken monitor - and then the laptop monitor goes dark and the external one takes over.

But whenever I follow the directions for Safe Mode -- hitting F8 to bring up the startup menu -- it seems to prevent the external monitor from taking over. (I've tried repeatedly using the Fn-F7 combo to manually switch it over, but no joy). As a result, I have to navigate the setup menu blind, by guessing where the cursor is according to how many times I've tapped the up or down arrows. This is not working. I can't seem to get into safe mode, and I definitely can't get the external monitor to take over so I can see what I'm doing.

Any help would be most appreciated.

 

Did you ever get an answer to this, because I have the same problem. To delete a "hacktool" that Symantic found on this lap top, it said to boot the laptop in "Safe Mode" by clicking on the "boot in safemode" check box in BOOT.INI in msconfig. Now I can't see the external monitor and the built in monitor is shattered. Help!