Laptop+externel moniter

My brother has an old Dell Inspiron(yes, I know it sucks big time) and the thing works pretty good for its age, except for the moniter on it which is really fucked up. Mostly a loose connection. It's really fuzzy, horrible colouring, way off center and when you change the resolution, it litterly makes the GUI take up more or less of the screen.(at 1024*768 there is a little bit on each side and top/bottom that is black and when you switch to the next size up it is too big for the moniter.

So I was wondering how to set an externel moniter as a primary one and not even use the one built in, this way we can close the laptop and set it out of the way and use a half decent 17" moniter as the main one.

It is running Win XP Home.
Kinda hard to explain, but...
Any help appreciated.

Most laptops have a S-video out and also have the normal connection where you plug in regular monitors

If it has a VGA connector, connect the monitor, then look for a key with two rounded rectangles separated by a line, hold down Fn and hit that key a few times slowly.

I tried that and the mouse(on screen) changed to the loading one for a few seconds, but that was it. I tried it with extend my desktop to this moniter on and off, nothing happens, just a slight flash and what I said above.

The key you've mentioned is two rectangles seperated by a slash and each one has an "a" in the middle. I even tried one that is CRT/LCD(figured for a tv hook up though). Nothing.

I bummed right now.