External monitor trouble

[Mckin3228]

My laptop screen was smashed the other month and I recently tried to hook up an external monitor but the issue I'm having is after plugging in the VGA cord into my laptop and pressing the shortcut to send the image to the monitor the light on ot flickers on and off and I see the screen trying its damnedest to get working but all that happens is that it flickers in a couple shades of black.

Laptop is an HP DV6(HD) and the external monitor is an optiquest Q9 (SD)

Any ideas?

 

[Anarchemitis]

Does your Labtop's video card support multiple monitors?
A more pertinent question would also be "has your labtop been set up to have the external monitor output to be the Primary output instead of the (likely default) Secondary output?
[img_inline caption="In all likelihood the Primary (1) is set to your broken screen
and the Secondary (2) has not been setup, which is
why it is not receiving a proper signal. Unfortunately in
order to amend this, the dialogue box will only appear first
in the Primary screen space."]http://www.geeks.com/techtips/2005/Images/properties.gif[/img_inline]

 

[BlueberryMUNCH]

I'm no expert at all, but maybe try messing around with the resolution a bit? Also, you could try connecting via HDMI provided the laptop and monitor have the sockets?