Laptop Screen Busted monitor wont stay active & need dat

So my employer came to us with an Acer Travelmate 2480-2153 with Vista Basic on it. apparently she tried to "rub" the pixels out of the screen. Well the monitor is busted on it now. I hooked up an LCD with VGA to it. It works on normal boot up until AFTER the windows loading screen, after that it goes back to the laptop which I can't see anything but the mouse and black background.

I get the screen to stay when i boot up in ANY other mode but normal mode and last known good configuration option. function keys work up until it gets past loadiing screen.

when i boot up in safe mode and the LCD stays as the main display it loads up and all i can see is a full black background and the mouse. i can move the mouse all around to the edges(it stops at the edge) i can't see any options all the keys combinations cease to exist with the exception of the function keys(except f5 for monitor).

Any suggestions

Oh and I am trying NOT to buy an external drive enclosure for it but I will if it's my only option.

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Comments

meadIT

You don't need an external drive enclosure, just a $6 adapter from newegg will let you hook the laptop drive to an IDE port in a desktop where you can retrieve the data.

deadpool287

forgot a detail. need it today.....

darkerosxx

So the laptop is loading up, then the OS is telling it to use the broken monitor. You'd have to find a way to get into display properties to tell it to use the other monitor. Not sure the easiest way to get there if it's defaulting to the broken monitor.

deadpool287

when it loads up though it loads up to a Black background with just the mouse. nothing else is there and none of the keys work except function keys.

darkerosxx

One thing you could try is putting it on a network and using remote desktop connection to see if you can connect and login. If you can, log in and change the display properties to use the new monitor rather than the broken one. If you can log in, you can at least pull data that way if you can't get the other monitor working.

meadIT

How about pulling the hard drive and installing it in another laptop?

deadpool287

no other laptops.

dynamik

darkerosxx wrote:

So the laptop is loading up, then the OS is telling it to use the broken monitor. You'd have to find a way to get into display properties to tell it to use the other monitor. Not sure the easiest way to get there if it's defaulting to the broken monitor.

Just open up display properties on another computer and practice changing the settings with a keyboard. Once you right-click the desktop, it's just up-arrow and enter to get into display properties. Tab and alt-keys should be able to get you through.

darkerosxx wrote:

One thing you could try is putting it on a network and using remote desktop connection to see if you can connect and login. If you can, log in and change the display properties to use the new monitor rather than the broken one. If you can log in, you can at least pull data that way if you can't get the other monitor working.

Good idea!

macdude

Most notebooks will let you switch back and forth between monitors, Most of them have an fn+f1-f12 key combo, so look at the f keys and see if its says crt/lcd or has a monitor symbol, hit that plus the fn key and you should be good to go.

If my google search was right it should be the fn+f5 key, hit that a couple of times and see if that helps.

shednik

darkerosxx wrote:

One thing you could try is putting it on a network and using remote desktop connection to see if you can connect and login. If you can, log in and change the display properties to use the new monitor rather than the broken one. If you can log in, you can at least pull data that way if you can't get the other monitor working.

These are you best options w/o spare hardware...

deadpool287

Thank you all for your help. When this problem first occurred i was under the impression that we did not have any PCs with SATA connectors. I know it sounds unlikely but you should see our hardware. needless to say they sent me to best buy and then called me when i got there and said they found a pc with a sata connector.....we are now attempting to recover the files. any recommendations on free file recover software?

dynamik

What's preventing you from simply copying it off? Did the drive get damaged? Are the contents encrypted?

deadpool287

I haven't tried my hand at the files. our other guy is taking care of that.