I am going to set up a workstation at home with a new monitor and a proper keyboard etc,but still usiing my laptop, so last night as a trial I plugged the monitor from my sister's desktop into my laptop and nothing, no signal. I went into settings etc and could not find anything to adjust etc.
Is there anything i'm doing wrong or is my laptop not set up for this?

look on your keyboard - there'll be a one button that has a switch for lcd/crt and another that will have 2 little screens that both have an "A" in them (mines a dell laptop with a Function button)

Press the function button and hold it down while pressing one of the 2 buttons listed above to toggle between the 2 setting on each, eventually the monitor ahould come out of standby.

Its a pain, I have to do this on mine each time I unplug and reconnect the monitor.

you might also have a switch on the monitor to toggle between digital and analogue inputs - its a case of trial and error with the 3 settings.

As above really - there's usually a function on the number keys (combined with pressing the "function key") - PITA from what I remember.

Even my MacBook Pro has to be set to transmit a video signal - either as a mirror mode or continuation from the lappy screen.

Seems to be the norm for pretty much all laptops then......

Dan

Another way to do it is put the lappy into standby(shut the lid). Connect the monitor, open up and away it goes. On mine anyway.
Take it you've told it you have one in Display menu.?

Sometimes I have found you need to either change the bios setting to allow dual display as it can be turned off in the bios

Or like my dell it has a software utility to turn the feature on and off

Similar to above, FUNCTION + F4 on my Fujistu (looks like a tv screen)

Although, this only works when i have minimised all the windows open on the screen. Once the switch has taken place, you can then open up the windows again.