Broken laptop screen, external monitor is black with only mouse pointer

[Westonblu]

I have a sony vaio laptop with a broken screen and keyboard. I have disconnected the laptop monitor and connected an external monitor. I have purchased a new laptop but I need to access files off the vaio. The external monitor starts up fine as windows loads but then the screen goes black and all you can see is the mouse pointer. Any ideas why or what to do? Thanks!

 

[Atrix]

Looks on your laptop keyboard you should see a key with what looks like a small monitor woth a big monitor might look like a square, now it might be in blue or smaller printe you should see an fn or function keyboard your keyboard press that and the other one together and it should work.

 

[Westonblu]

Thanks Atrix but the keyboard on the vaio doesn't work either.

 

[Markkk]

Usually the Blue FN key located usually bottom left and the F4 key to turn screen on/off

But since your keyboard is also broken - You could plug an external keyboard (some use laptop keyboard have the FN keys like the Laptop ones (may have to disconnect the broken Laptop keyboard)

As a Last resort (Maybe a better option) you can remove the HDD from the busted Latop and use it in an external usb enclosure - and copy the files needed to your new laptop.