laptop monitor Archives

Why Doesn’t My External Monitor Work?

I’ve connected my Optiquest monitor to my HP PC but it won’t restart. I get an RGB “no input” message. What can I do?

This is actually an example question. I get a number of questions like this from time to time. The scenario is this: you have something like a laptop whose screen has failed. In other words, you can’t see what’s on your computer. One of the very common approaches to try and work around that until it gets fixed or replaced is to connect to an external monitor. The problem is that the external monitor doesn’t show anything.

There are a couple of additional steps that might be necessary, beyond just plugging in the monitor.

How Do I Connect a Monitor to My Laptop and Have it Work?

How do I hook up a monitor to my laptop? I can not get the monitor to work.

I see people struggle with this all the time. It’s actually somewhat frustrating, since the answers are actually simple, just not obvious.

You need to know the magic keystroke.

And you need patience. Just a few seconds worth, but you absolutely need it.

How Can I Keep My Laptop Running with the Lid Closed?

When I close the lid of my Toshiba notebook, the internet stops, meaning that if I want to download stuff, the lid always has to be open, which is really annoying. Any way to change this without connecting another monitor and mouse?

It’s probably not the internet that’s stopping; it’s the entire computer.

The default configuration for most laptops these days is to go into Standby, or even Hibernation, when the laptop is closed.

Fortunately, it’s just a setting you can control in Windows.