Broken Lappy Screen Plese Help

[leon]

Hi guys, I would like to ask a question regarding my sons Dell Laptop.

He dropped it this morning by accident , and now the LCD screen has bleed and of coarse nothing will display.

Although not very happy with this, he will get it fixed in time, but was wondering is there any way to retrieve the data on the hard drive, while it is in this condition.

Would be we be able to send the data to an external drive, or some thing like that.

Could some kind person please help out here and give me some advice of the best way to go about it.

As I understand it there is very little, other than text documents on the HD, and some Uni stuff, for his coarse that he is presently doing

Many thanks in advance.

Leon

[GTB_an_Owl (Geoff)]

Hi Leon

you can take the HDD out and put it in an external USB enclosure - then transfer data to where ever you want

should be able to pick one up at hardly normals or the like

geoff

[GTB_an_Owl (Geoff)]

you might need to know whether your HDD is IDE or SATA before buying the enclosure

geoff

Hi Leon,

All is not lost
about 90% of all Laptops have external VGA output.
This means that you can plug a monitor to the laptop to subsitute for the damaged laptop screen.

All you need is a VGA cable which is avilable at Harvys/DSE/any computer shop. I have about 10 sitting at home

All you do is plug the cable from the laptop to the monitor.
the port looks like this:
http://tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:...g/vga_port.jpg

Turn the laptop on and you can continue using your laptop as you would normally.

This is of course, assuming you have a spare monitor.

Cheers,
Ash

[leon]

Gee Guys I new I could count on you, many thanks.

Leon

[Kevnool (Kev)]

If you go the vga cable way and you have givin it enough time to be up and running hold down the FN key then look at the F keys to see a monitor on it then press it to change from lcd to vga .....

Get someone to confirm this please Leon before you proceed !

Some lappys the key is F3 but mine is F5.

Cheers Kev.

[Shaun]

Sometimes you need to adjust video properties for this to work with esternal monitor, mine is F8 but the picture should be on the Fkeys, depending on what has happend to the monitor you might be able to shine a flash light on the screen to see what is on it if just the backlight has blown.

Generally most standard BIOS chips will do a "clone display" output if a VGA cable is plugged in. So I have no doubt it will work without needing to boot into the O/S. I used to do this all the time when I worked as a tech at a computer shop.

In the case your BIOS fails to do so then you need to hold down the "F" (function) key with the relative "F number" (ie F5) it will have a picture of a monitor on it.
This will force the BIOS to activate the dual video output.

The reason it should work straight away is because of this very scenario.
Manufactures were aware of the fact that if the screen fails on the laptop it renders it useless. Hence the majority of commercial standard laptops have accessible VGA output to allow the laptop to be useable in the case of a broken display.

[erick (Eric)]

F7 on my IBM.

[PeterM]

Hi Leon,
Plenty replies to get you out of bother, that's great. You have probably already thought of this, but if not you may want to talk to your home contents insurer as it is possible it maybe covered for accidental damage. Just a thought. Once you have external screen running plug in a USB drive in and copy your files across.
PeterM.

[Shaun]

I broke the screen on one of my laptops so i ripped it off and now use the laptop as an entitament pc sitting on my dvd player connected to the TV

[leon]

Thanks guys you have all been very helpful, I'm sure I will be able to sort this out with all your suggestions, thanks again.

Leon

[Glenhuon (Bill)]

Had a similar problem with a old Dell a few months back (my guiding puter, cat pulled it off the table ). Managed to get a replacement screen for about $20 on Ebay. 30 mins to replace the broken one as it only involves a few screws and a couple of plugs.

Bill