Hooking a Damaged Laptop up to a Computer Monitor?

I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop (purchased in 2003). A little while back its LCD screen got almost completely damaged. The laptop itself works perfectly fine. I am trying to hook my laptop up to a standard PC monitor so I can still use it.

When I restart the laptop with the monitor hooked into it, the monitor displays "Windows is starting up..." as if it's going to work. However, when my laptop gets to the "log-on as user" screen, the big monitor goes into standby mode and no longer displays. The most aggravating thing is I can't even see the majority of the screen on the laptop so I can't see what's going on or adjust any of the settings.

What am I doing wrong? How can I get the laptop to display on my PC monitor? There must be a very simple step-by-step way to do this that I'm missing out on.

 

Most likely the display resolution is out of the range the big display can handle.

Boot the laptop, and immediately (and I mean immediately) after the first splash screen or the "Press such-and-such key to enter setup" message disappears, press the <F8> button a bunch of times. From the list that shows up, select "VGA Mode". That should get you into Windows, but the display will be ugly. Now you can go into Display Properties and set the resolution how you want it, and it should boot like that from now on.

 

You are a genius!!!! Thank you!!!

 

Changing Resolution....

So now thanks to da chicken, the laptop works with my monitor. The display is hideous, as he said it would be. But whenever I try to change the resolution, it automatically switches back to the crappy laptop monitor and the PC monitor goes on standby again. What's the deal?

 

Re: Changing Resolution....

Hm. Maybe it's not the problem I thought it was.

Typically on a laptop there's a special <Fn> key, usually colored green or blue or grey, and then on the keys themselves are green or blue or grey text for the special functions they have. Usually, one of the function keys says "CRT/LCD" or has a picture of a monitor on it. It's typically <F6>, <F7>, or <F8>. Hold down the <Fn> key, and press the corresponding "CRT/LCD" key. the laptop should cycle through three display modes:
1. Laptop display only.
2. External display only.
3. Both laptop and external display simultaneously.

Alternately, you might need to change the Refresh rate of the external monitor. Go to Display Properties --> Settings --> Advanced button --> Monitor. You might need to click on the display labelled "2" on the Setting tab to see the external monitor settings. Set it to 60 Hz, which should work at most resolutions. Don't set the resolution too high, either. check to see if 1024x768 at 32 bit color and 60 Hz works before going higher.