[TanyaForogrove]

I recently shattered my Laptop's Built on LCD screen, and shortly after I started using an external monitor. I don't really have nor do I desire to spend the money it would take to fix the screen when I'm doing just fine with what has turned out to be a higher quality external monitor. However, The original broken screen hangs blank and pointless over my keyboard, taking up far too much space. I have to keep it open, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to access the keyboard. I've thought about removing the screen component entirely, leaving only the actual computer base and built-in keyboard, but I don't know how to go about removing it. As an added problem, even though I have the configuration for the display set to automatically switch to the external monitor, that setting only comes into effect once the login screen appears, leaving me blind to the start-up screens for the most part, as only a fraction of my laptop's original LCD screen is intact. I don't want to remove the screen if it means I have no way to access the system recovery pages or OS tools, or worse, have to worry that my computer will automatically revert to trying to access a primary monitor at start up if I should decide to reinstall my OS.
So my question is twofold; What can I do to make my startup appear on the external monitor primarily and how can I ensure that this setting will not revert once I've removed the screen? Any information on the actual removal of the screen would also be very appreciated, as I'm not quite sure that there aren't any important wires or hardware located on the same circuit as the screen. Thank you for enduring this long explanation, and any help you guys could give me would be immensely appreciated!

Here are my PC's details:

-Currently I'm Running Win7, But I plan to switch to Linux soon
-Pentium® Dual Core CPU T4300 @ 2.10GHz
-OS is 64 bit
-The Computer itself is a Dell Inspiron 14

I have no idea how much of that is relevant.

Edited by TanyaForogrove, 18 June 2013 - 03:29 PM.