Laptop with broken screen won't show up on external monitor

[transcending]

Hi guys. I bought a Samsung R519 laptop with a broken screen. The idea was that I was going to connect it to an external monitor and use it that way as a second home computer. Except that when I connect it to the external monitor nothing happens. I tried the Fn 4 thing, but there’s still no signal. However when the laptop boots-up there was the windows sound.

Then I decided to take the hard-drive and put into my other laptop. Upon the boot-up I got a message that the hard-drive is gonna fail soon and I should replace it ASAP. After that the windows would try to boot-up but I would get the ‘blue screen of death’. So I got the ubuntu dvd thing and ran a disk check test, it said that everything’s fine with the hard drive. I then proceed to install the Ubuntu but I would get an error every time.

As my last resort I tried installing Windows Vista on it. And I succeed except that Windows somehow only sees 8GB’s instead all of the 250GB’s. I then installed the hard-drive back into the Samsung but I still couldn’t get nothing on the external monitor.

So I guess my question is the laptop a lost cause? Should I just sell it on eBay for spares? Or is there anything else I can try?

 

[getochkn]

I assume you meant FN + F4, not FN + 4 to switch graphics to external.

If that's the case and that doesn't work, then it's probably something with the graphics chip of the system and not the screen at all. A broken screen should still allow the system to output to a monitor with FN + F4, regardless of any OS being installed. You should be able to get into the BIOS and see it on your external screen. If no external screen works, I would say it's something with the graphics chip itself.

 

[transcending]

Oh yeah I tried the Fn + F4. Actually I booted from another linux dvd and it showed on the external monitor. But it appears that the hard drive is failing 🙁. Oh well. Thanks for your help, man.