Display to external monitor if laptop screen is broken.

[Kahlo kahlow]

So I had a really old Dell laptop lying around and I wanted to do something with it. But the screen is broken... How do i display what's on the laptop to the external monitor? The laptop has windows xp. I've completely removed the screen too to make sure that it's not reading it and making it the main screen if that's how it works.

 

[little_me]

Laptops usually have a button on F-keys, coupled with the fn button that swaps display in use.
fn+F4 in my old HP
fn+F4 in my even older HP
fn+F8 in my Asus (except in Asus it brings up windows' own screen changing menu if it has booted to windows, in which case pressing up and then enter to change it by one step works.)

F-Key might be different in different brands but it exists in all laptops.
It usually toggles between laptop only-Duplicated to laptop+external and external only, in your case you would want external only.

 

[Kahlo kahlow]

Laptops usually have a button on F-keys, coupled with the fn button that swaps display in use.
fn+F4 in my old HP
fn+F4 in my even older HP
fn+F8 in my Asus (except in Asus it brings up windows' own screen changing menu if it has booted to windows, in which case pressing up and then enter to change it by one step works.)

F-Key might be different in different brands but it exists in all laptops.
It usually toggles between laptop only-Duplicated to laptop+external and external only, in your case you would want external only.

Actually..... The laptop's keyboard is no more lol.

 

[Kahlo kahlow]

Well nevermind. Just noticed that the fan's laptop doesn't even work and so I threw it.

 

[little_me]

While you could have used the laptop with external keyboard, you would have been stuck since external keyboards lack that fn shortcut key to change the display mode.
Not that it matters anymore but just mentioning it in case anyone else later on reads this and has the same problem.