Most laptops have a vga output, you will have to go into your control pannel, click on display, then the settings tab, you should see two large grey boxes with numbers in them. (1) is your laptop screen, (2) is the external monitor.

right click on (2) and click on "Attached", that will allow you to ouput to that screen. If you want to run dual monitors, simply click the box that says "extend mhy windows desktop onto this monitor".

*this advice assumes your using windows xp, other versions have similar settings, but not word for word.

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