You may not know this, but if you are a Windows user, you can hook a desktop or external monitor up to your laptop and use it instead of (or in tandem with) your laptop's own screen. This can come in handy, especially if you are experiencing problems with your laptop's screen. For example, if you dropped your laptop down the stairs and now, when you try to boot it, all you get is a

black screen, you could hook a desktop monitor up to your laptop in order to determine if it is just a screen problem or something more. It is also convenient if your laptop's screen has definitely been broken – you can use the desktop monitor to navigate through your laptop and back up any information you need to back up, provided that nothing else was damaged in the laptop.

To do this, all you need is a properly functioning desktop monitor, your laptop, and the right kind of port on your laptop or an adapter that will give you the right kind of port – basically, one that fits the plug on the monitor's cable. And now, let's look at how to actually get the job done.

The process of hooking a desktop monitor up to a laptop computer is simple and easy. All you have to do is plug the monitor into the corresponding port on your laptop and boot up the laptop. The laptop should be able to recognize that you have another monitor plugged in. Then you can toggle from the laptop being the set primary screen over to the desktop monitor by pushing one of the function keys on your keyboard. The exact key can vary depending on the make and model of your particular laptop, but it should show you a little picture of a monitor on it. If you do not see anything like that, check your user manual to determine what the right key is, or get online somehow and look it up (hopefully you have Internet access on a computer somewhere else that DOES have a functioning screen!).

Once you hit that function key, the desktop monitor should kick in and start displaying. And now you have a functioning display! If it does not work, though, it may be that the laptop has another problem going on that is not related to the screen. This process can also be used if you just want to view things with your laptop at a different resolution or on a bigger screen, but all in all, it is a very handy trick to learn.