I broke my lcd screen and have set up a VGA external monitor on my laptop (compaq Presario, amd 64, XP/sp2,1 gb mem). I have toggled F4 and the monitor works but at the lowest setting and the graphics are terrible. I can not change the settings or the screen goes black. In my settings, I show two external monitors and the lcd disabled. Is there a way I can get the os to recognize the external monitor and let me adjust the resulution. Thanks for any help. Mythman

Did you try connecting two different external monitors at some point in time? Possibly removing the monitors and starting over. If you can enter Windows then go to advanced display settings and see if the monitor is identified by model. If not go to add hardware wizard and attempt to add the monitor. If Windows doesn't recognise the monitor it defaults to standard VGA settings. If the monitor is properly identified and this problem still exists you may need to re-install the graphics chip drivers. You should find them at the manufacturer's website.

The OS (or more specifically the video driver) will only recognize the external monitor the same way it recognizes the LCD, so you can only get the resolution built into the LCD by the video driver. Good luck. I - Sandor J Knowledge is the treasure, but judgment is the treasurer of the wise man. - William Penn (1614 - 1718) ATI video is great, but never buy it from Sapphire!!!