IBM R31 Laptop Video Issue

[Prydonian]

Morning!

I'm having a bit of a brain freeze. My boss has an IBM R31 laptop (1.1Ghz Celeron, 512Mb memory, 20GB HDD, Windows XP SP2). She has a 17" Hitachi LCD monitor on her desk and an IBM docking station.

Now for my problem. Fn+F7 does not and never did (regardless of what IBM says) switch the video display between the TFT and the external LCD. When this problem began (when she decided to use an external monitor instead of the laptop display), I remember googling and finding out that to switch the video on an R31, what you had to do was to use Alt+F1....

This works like a charm with one little hitch. You can switch to the external monitor, but not back to the TFT! If she has to go to a meeting and needs her laptop, she has to reboot it in order to get back to the TFT screen. Needless to say, this is not the cause of peace and joy in my life.

We have several other models of IBM Thinkpads (A31s, T31s, but no other R31s to compare with) and none of them have this problem.

I tried to re-find the original information about Alt-F1 but to no avail.....

Has anybody run into this before? Any help will be extemely appreciated!

Thanks in advance,

Mike, The IT Guy

Life is too short to drink warm beer....

 

[ceh4702]

I would check the settings in the BIOS if you can get into the BIOS. Maybe you have to change a setting to get it to work right.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.