[Connecting external monitor to nc6120 hp Compaq laptop]

My friend has a nc6120 hp compaq laptop, and he has bad eyes, so i said hook up an ext monitor. but it dosen't work. is there anything in the bios i have to change to make it work,, thanks in advance.

 

To switch between displays - hold down fn key and press f4

 

thanks i will try that tomorrow.

 

My apologies for being too lazy this morning to verify so F4 may be the correct function key for that specific HP/Compaq notebook. But it is important to note there is no industry standard. My Toshiba, for example, uses F5.

That said, notebooks are designed for road warriors and briefings. I have never seen a notebook that required any extra software to enable the graphics adapter to use an external monitor. Not saying there's aren't any, but I would be very surprised to see a notebook that did not support external displays right out of the box.

 

i tried fn f4 and fn f5 and nothing.. the monitor says no conection

 

And are you sure the monitor works?

From waht I can see, it is Fn + F4 on your system. When you press that key sequence several times, does the notebook monitor ever go dark, or is it always on? It should allow you to cycle through notebook only, external monitor only, and both.

 

yes i tried the monitor on my laptop and it comes on right away.
on his nothing, when i turn on the monitor the light is blue then turns yellow and says no conection.

 

Well, I have seen that often on PCs, but never on notebooks which again, are designed for road warriors where connecting to external monitors and projectors is a very common task. But again, I would not dare say since I have never seen it, it cannot be so.

I say I have never seen that on notebooks - I have to take that back. I have seen that when users have reinstalled (NOT "restored ") Windows and often when they upgraded to a new version of Windows but failed to setup the notebook as it was configured at the factory.

I would very much like to see a notebook out of the box that is not ready for an external monitor. I bet that would not be easy to find and I suspect would be the exception, rather than the rule.

 

the laptop has anew hard drive, i put in win vista but org. it had win xp, do you think if i install win xp that will take care of it.

 

Simply installing an OS is not the problem. You need the necessary hardware drivers and as Tony notes, the correct setup.

 

i did put the drivers for vista. but since it came from the factory with xp, maybe that will do it. i have a copy of xp and iam going to try it.

 

Before you do, you better be 100% sure there are XP drivers available.

 

i went to hp website and the drivers for both are there.

 

i tried putting xp back in and all the drivers but the same thing. nothing. i guess this laptop can not take an ext monitor, i give up. thanks for all your help.

 

its a hp compaq nc6120 basic mdl.
i put in win xp pro. and the drivers i got from the hp website. i put all the drivers listed for xp. including the graphics drivers. don;t know what kind it is.

 

tried all of them, th