Changing Display Settings

[notslow]

My roomie is having a bit of a dilema that I am trying to help him with.

The screen on his laptop (running Win XP) is totally busted so he is running it with a separate monitor. Another part of the problem is that when he is logged in on the admin account it defaults to the laptop screen which is totally messed and you can't see what you are doing. It will only default to the monitor when you are logged in as a guest. This blows for the obvious reason that he can't install/uninstall apps or really do anything with his computer.

I have tried getting to the display settings from memory and using the guest account as a guide but I am unable to.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[Adeianos]

First, if you are getting video to the monitor during POST, go into the bios and look for a video output option, ensure that it is set to display to both the screen and the video output. Second, if this doesn't fix the problem, try using remote assistance and changing the settings from another computer. Or, alternatively, pull the hard drive, boot to it in another machine, change the settings, and replace.