External monitor on a laptop

[mugs]

I have this old Dell Inspiron 5000 that I got for free, because someone stepped on it and broke the screen and spilled orange juice on the keyboard. I'm trying to get an external monitor working on it, but I get a message on the monitor when I plug it in that says frequency out of range. It says the horizontal frequency is about 65 Hz (which is fine), but the vertical frequency is 255 Hz (which is not fine). How the heck do I fix this? It has a mobile version of the GeForce2 in it.

 

[mugs]

(bump) anyone?

 

[mugs]

(double post, whoops)

 

[zephyrprime]

That veritical frequency is impossible. I'm not sure what's up but there's nothing you do since you can't see the screen. Try a different monitor.

You can buy anew screen from dell but they might try to charge you up the wazoo. You can also try ebay for a new screen. Keyboards are cheap on ebay.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
That veritical frequency is impossible. I'm not sure what's up but there's nothing you do since you can't see the screen. Try a different monitor.

You can buy anew screen from dell but they might try to charge you up the wazoo. You can also try ebay for a new screen. Keyboards are cheap on ebay.

Actually, a large portion of the screen is intact, it's just a huge section in the middle that's black. I figured there was something up with the vertical frequency, because it was just a little coincidental that it was 255 Hz. I'm definitely not going to buy a new screen for the laptop, it's not worth it. I have another laptop, I just wanted to play around with Windows Server 2003 on this one (it's not going anywhere with me). Same with the keyboard - I just plugged in a USB keyboard. I've tried 5 other monitors, and on several of them I actually got a picture - but it was squeezed into about a 4 inch tall rectangle in the middle of the screen, and it was trying to refresh WAY too fast.