How to use external monitor without using Laptop's keyboard

[anthonyorm]

I have an acer travelmate 5730 and I was trying to hook it up to a monitor, I am missing the actual screen and keyboard/touchpad from the laptop. I have it on a keyboard/mouse and external monitor but it doesnt show windows, it shows the bios and stuff fine. but nothing else. Is there another key combo that I can do without fn or something else I can try?

 

[larkspur]

So the laptop's monitor/keyboard are non-functional or simply broken or torn off or something right? I'm not a laptop guy but in my experience sometimes laptops have a fn key combo for switching monitors. It is usually the fn key and then some key that has a symbol of a monitor on it. This is assuming you are using a native monitor port (and not a usb monitor). If that doesn't do anything then try looking around in the BIOS. Otherwise maybe try booting into windows safe mode (press the f8 key when trying to boot before windows starts loading) and then selecting Safe mode (assuming that the options actually appear on the screen). If you can get into windows then go into display properties and try to set the external monitor as the primary display. Like I said, I'm not a laptop guy so none of that might help.

 

[anthonyorm]

So the laptop's monitor/keyboard are non-functional or simply broken or torn off or something right? I'm not a laptop guy but in my experience sometimes laptops have a fn key combo for switching monitors. It is usually the fn key and then some key that has a symbol of a monitor on it. This is assuming you are using a native monitor port (and not a usb monitor). If that doesn't do anything then try looking around in the BIOS. Otherwise maybe try booting into windows safe mode (press the f8 key when trying to boot before windows starts loading) and then selecting Safe mode (assuming that the options actually appear on the screen). If you can get into windows then go into display properties and try to set the external monitor as the primary display. Like I said, I'm not a laptop guy so none of that might help.

The screen and keyboard are broken off the laptop, I got into safemode and I can see everything but In the display settings, It wont let me chose the screen, It just says Default monitor.

 

[larkspur]

Well, since that's the only monitor, windows should display on it after a regular boot but this is a laptop and laptops are a pain. Since it doesn't have its native keyboard I guess the whole fn key combo is probably not feasible and is probably the problem - did you look around in BIOS and see if you could find any way of bypassing or disabling the fn functionality or some kind of monitor settings? Seems doubtful but worth a look. I certainly don't know a workaround for getting around that entire fn key thing. If this is a USB monitor then I suggest trying to install its drivers since you can get it into safe mode. If it isn't a USB monitor but it has special windows drivers maybe try installing those. I dunno.

 

[anthonyorm]

VGA Mode seems to also work but I can't change the resolution. It picks up my monitor fine(I think), it says: LCD Flat Panel instead of "Monitor" like last time. I'm gonna search in the device manager for stuff too

 

[anthonyorm]

Well, since that's the only monitor, windows should display on it after a regular boot but this is a laptop and laptops are a pain. Since it doesn't have its native keyboard I guess the whole fn key combo is probably not feasible and is probably the problem - did you look around in BIOS and see if you could find any way of bypassing or disabling the fn functionality or some kind of monitor settings? Seems doubtful but worth a look. I certainly don't know a workaround for getting around that entire fn key thing. If this is a USB monitor then I suggest trying to install its drivers since you can get it into safe mode. If it isn't a USB monitor but it has special windows drivers maybe try installing those. I dunno.

Okay, Im going to look in the bios right now

 

[anthonyorm]

Well, since that's the only monitor, windows should display on it after a regular boot but this is a laptop and laptops are a pain. Since it doesn't have its native keyboard I guess the whole fn key combo is probably not feasible and is probably the problem - did you look around in BIOS and see if you could find any way of bypassing or disabling the fn functionality or some kind of monitor settings? Seems doubtful but worth a look. I certainly don't know a workaround for getting around that entire fn key thing. If this is a USB monitor then I suggest trying to install its drivers since you can get it into safe mode. If it isn't a USB monitor but it has special windows drivers maybe try installing those. I dunno.

Bios has nothing about it

 

[larkspur]

Only other thing I can think of would be to go into safe mode - since that's all you can really do anyway And then uninstall the graphics drivers. Do NOT try to uninstall the vga.sys default windows driver provided by microsoft (which it uses while in safe mode) - leave that alone. Look for whatever graphics driver that the laptop's graphics solution uses. Might be AMD, might be Intel, might be Nvidia, it varies from model to model and a quick look on google isn't giving me a definitive answer. That's just a shot in the dark, I dunno. There also might be some kind of Acer drivers which help facilitate the fn functionality in the OS that you could try removing although you'd want to be sure about what you are removing because that could cause problems. As a last, last resort you might try a fresh windows install but you should probably wait and see if an actual laptop expert around here has a better solution. Wish I could be more help.