Hi, I've been trying to hook up my laptop on my new Sanyo t.v. using a 4-pin s-video cable on both ends. however the control panel (display) does not show a second monitor. I never had this problem with my old t.v. using a vga for both ends

The WinXP on your laptop cannot "automatically" detect your Sanyo TV through the S-video connection. The VGA (often called RGB PC on TVs) has a communication protocol called DDC which communicates with WinXP about it's presence and video capabilities. S-video has no such communication protocol so you'll have to read the manual on your laptop and learn how the S-video out is supposed to work and how to use it. Another problem you will have is screen resolution. S-video is only capable of low resolution (I can't remember the maximum resolution right now, but it's less than 640x480), so if the display on your laptop is set to something like 1024x768, then is is impossible to send that resolution through the S-video to your TV.