External display with laptop

[Barbara]

My "darling" son cracked the display of my laptop, so I'm trying to use an external monitor to get some tax data off of it. I'm using an old (8 years+) monitor, and so far, I've only been able to get it to work in safe mode. Any other mode, the monitor can't accept the video output from the laptop. My laptop's resolution was set at something like 1400x???.

In safe mode, it's displaying at 640x480 resolution, but my tax program needs at least 800x600. I've tried changing the display resolution in safe mode, but the changes don't seem to "stick". I'm really at a loss right now and beginning to enter panic mode.

I looked at monitors at Best Buy and there was one for $129 that would display at a higher resolution than my laptop. Do I need to buy a new monitor? It wouldn't be a total waste as I could swap it for the one on the desktop.

[Chicken]

You can't try hooking it up to *any* monitor (friend's, at work, etc.) to see if it works?

[Barbara]

I can't take it into work because I work in a secure area. Actually, I don't have too many techy friends, but I'll ask around. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Robert]

Safe mode doesn't load the drivers, so it will only load the native resolution of your laptop, in this case, being 640 x 480.

Your monitor doesn't work because the resoltuion on your laptop is way to high, so it can't read that.

The only thing you can try doing is in safe mode, deleting the video drivers, causing the system to display the native resoltuion when you boot into regular boot, then you can reinstall the drivers.

[Barbara]

I have no idea on how to delete the video drivers, nor on how to re-install them. It still sounds like my best bet is to find another monitor to use that can support the video output from my laptop.

[markblair]

As Robert mentioned, one way is to remove the drivers via Safe Mode. Otherwise, it would be best to find a monitor that supports the higher settings. Good luck!