Connecting laptop to an external desktop monitor

[horus13]

I managed to smash the screen of my Acer Aspire laptop and decided to remove it and connect the rest to an external monitor. Everything went fine and I have used the laptop as a desktop PC for about 3 months with no problems at all.
Last week I've decided to reinstall Windows XP Home and after installation, when you have to go and answer those Microsoft boring setup questions, the monitor went into stand by.
You can still hear the background sound that tells you windows was just been installed and even use the monitor by pressing F2 and entering setup, but nothing else.
Can somebody please help me with this?

[patio]

Is the smashed panel viewable ? ? If so you might have to finish the installation using that and when it's done power down and then hook up the external monitor...

patio.  8-)

[2k_dummy]

Try the Fn key combination that transfers video to the external monitor.

[horus13]

Of course, as previous said, the smashed LCD was removed a long time ago.And yes, combination of Fn + any other keys doesn't work at all. The laptop won't boot on the external monitor now with the new installation!