Broken laptop monitor - how to view second screen

[Briand18]

The screen on my Dell Latitude laptop is completely kaput. I am currently accessing my files using Remote Desktop in Windows but this won't let me install the Mint updates, and there are a couple of other annoyances. I have plugged another monitor into the vga port, but (this seems to be a common problem if Mr Google is to be believed) all I see is the desktop and no icons. I can open a terminal by right clicking, but my skills aren't up to much as far as terminal programming goes.

Is there a reasonably straightforward guide to sorting this out so the second screen emulates my laptop screen properly? I must stress again that I can't see anything on the laptop monitor, so any solution which requires me to see the laptop monitor isn't going to cut it.

[Laurent85]

Did you try the function Fn+F#, replace F# with the function key figuring two screens symbol.

[Briand18]

Laurent, that seems such an ideal solution that I can't believe it will work. If it does it will convince me that often people who suggest writing script, messing around with xorg (or whatever) are looking for complications where there aren't any.

Equally, it may be that they are right. I don't know if function keys are independent of the os used, but I suspect that at least some of these functions will only work when running Windows. I'll post back tomorrow, as the second monitor is not currently available.

[helterskelter]

Laptop FN keys are generally hardware driven regardless of OS. Works on my 3 laptops 2x Acer and 1 x Dell Inspiron.

ed

[Briand18]

No, didn't work alas Laurent. Merely toggled between no display (on broken laptop screen) and icon-less desktop on the external monitor, ie exactly what I had before. However, I did find a sort-of workaround using Terminal command (I picked this up from another thread on the Forum):

xrandr -q (to find out what my config has called the second screen)
xrandr --output <display name of the external monitor (which in the case of my config was VGA1) > --primary

This didn't bring up the icons on the Desktop, but it did put the Menu on the taskbar, and after that I was able to run applications, access files etc. It was a bit of a faff, as after the applications were opened they didn't appear directly on the second screen until I 'Moved' them using the application shortcut on the taskbar. But that has sorted me for the time being.