sp2 playing havoc with my monitor driver??

[geurinT]

Hello,

I just wiped and reinstalled xp pro. Everything was running good. I have
a laptop with a screen that probably has a burned out backlight or
transformer or some such, so it's on a dock and I'm using an external
monitor. I tried to install the SP2 and everything seemed fine. After the
reboot, all I got on the external monitor is the desktop background pic. No
start menu. No files that were previously on desktop. Figuring I messed
something up I went back to a previous save point and tried to figure out
what I did wrong. Posted on here but didn't get anywhere. So I tried again.
Same thing, but before I reboot I looked at the screen of the laptop -
besides being extremely dim it looks good. I go and get a flashlight. yep,
looks like all is well with the computer, just won't send anything but the
desktop background to the external monitor. So here I sit with headlamp on
trying to figure out how to get the monitor to work again. Any thoughts?
Besides that I look rediculous?

 

[R. McCarty]

All notebooks have a key combination to switch video from the
internal to external monitor. Sound like the setup is configured
to a multi-monitor layout. I'd try the Function+__ keypress and
see if you can toggle the primary output to the external monitor.

 

[geurinT]

This was indeed the problem. Fixed it by going into properties on the
desktop and playing around with monitor settings. It was set to dual
monitors and the Fn option wouldn't set me up to just use the external as a
main monitor.