Monitor problem and mirroring

[buzznick]

Hi all, here's my problem:

I have a Toshiba laptop on which the monitor completely died on me today. I then plugged in an external monitor believing that I would get a mirror of the laptop screen. This works fine until Windows has finished booting up - then the external monitor just turns off and goes into standby mode.

I'm assuming this is because I didn't have mirroring turned on in my display properties before the main monitor died.

Does anyone know of any way I can get around this and get the image to mirror on the external monitor so I can actually use the laptop?

Obviously, I can't log in to Windows or change any settings without seeing things.

Thanks!

 

[felixc]

Is it the backlight that died? Using a light you might still see a faint image on your display.
Can you get Windows to boot in safe mode and see something on the screen. In this mode it should operate the graphics chip as a dumb vga controller. If you can do that, then you can probably disable the VGA controller or its driver, to have windows to reinstall it at the next boot.

 

[buzznick]

Hi felixc, thanks for that response. I'm not sure if it's the backlight - how do I use a light to see?

It works OK in safe mode but I can't do much once I'm in there. All I want to be able to do is set the external monitor to be the "main" monitor.

Nick

 

[felixc]

Under bright light conditions, try to see from various angles if there are some patterns that look like screen data. If you can read something then it may be that the backlight or its inverter is defective.

Unless someone else on the forum has experienced it, I think that the thing to do now is to go to the device manager and remove the VGA adapter. The next time you boot, it will redetect the VGA controller and try to reinstall the drivers that are already on the hard disk, but in their default mode. Hopefully, when the driver detects an external monitor it will enable it at the same time as the LCD. The "default" mode differs between systems, so it may not work with yours.

 

[buzznick]

Hi again felixc, I'll give that a shot. I forgot to mention that the screen had a reddish tinge to it before it died - don't know what that signifies.

Anyways, I'll try your suggestions and many thanks once again!!

Nick