jeremy72179

my del inspiron b120 running XP (Home, i think) took a little fall and now the screen is displaying all types of craziness and nothing usefull. I can tap the side of the screen and get it to display different garbage so I think that the circuit board on the screen is at fault or one of the connectors up there. Tapping the body of the laptop doesn't change the symptoms at all. I've got some electronics experience and i opened it up and didn't see anything obviously broken or disconnected and I made sure that the monitor connectors were seated tightly. I'm pretty sure its still booting up and everything but not 100% sure (obviously). The laptop has a standard monitor jack on the side but I plugged a monitor in and got nothing so I'm guessing that the jack is disabled somewhere in the software settings.

Is there a way I can make a boot disk that will enable that monitor output jack?

Also, I heard theres a HD enclosure that u can drop your laptop HD into to make it like an external HD, can anyone recommend one compatible w/ a dell 40gb HD out of an inspirion b120?

This laptop was a freebie so I'm not really trying to spend an arm and a leg fixing it, not to mention the fact that it isn't exactly state of the art and top of the line to begin with. Thanks for the help.

grimx133

With a Dell try Fn + F8 when you have an external monitor attached, this toggles between the laptop screen and an external. At least it does on my Inspiron.

Blue_Gene

Check out www.newegg.com and see if you can find a good external enclosure on this website. They sell plenty of them here.

grimx133

They have a whack of them at newegg, some are multidrive or have features that can make them quite pricey. You don't want or need that. Just something that can handle a 2.5 inch notebook hard drive. There's one there that's 10 bucks, not including shipping and whatever taxes. It should work with your drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817145752

jeremy72179

Fn F8 works like a champ. Now I can at least use my laptop until i can get the lcd fixed. TY Grimx!

jeremy72179

now my next question: if the monitor o/p jack is working does that mean that my video card is working and I just need a new LCD or not necessarily? I saw new LCD's for my laptop for sale but I'd hate to buy one and have it still not work right. Any suggestions on how to isolate the fault?

Terrister

If the external monitor works then you should be able to replace just the LCD.

If you have not done so already, look on Ebay. It is a great place to find laptop parts.