OK
I had installed fedora core 4 on this machine. Fedora Core 5 came out, downloaded it and did the install and for the most part everything seemed ok. It restarted ( I think it was part of the install) and then the monitor went black. At first, I thought the monitor had died, but then I connected the monitor to the laptop, did video output through the monitor and it worked perfectly. Unplugged it and it said a message on the screen " No video signal", plugged it into the fedora machine...pitch black. I know the computer is running because the fans are going and I can hear the hard drive going crazy. So I leave it for a couple of hours plugged in... nothing... I decide to reinstall fedora core 4 .. same thing pitch black screen.

Someone mentioned to me that they were having problems after the installation because it was going to the secondary monitor or something like that, but they were able to fix the problem and havent gotten the details yet on that. Even if its that, the only cable I have for the monitor, its ends are both input pins (male connectors) and the other place I can see where a monitor could be plugged in is input pins( male connectors), so do I need to go and buy a female-male cable for the monitor so I can see whats going on??
Any help would be greatly appreciated

I had issue with SuSE 10; you may need to go to laptop to get video, then change monitor type and frequency settings. Mine would work with crt but not LCD until I changed settings to lcd monitor frequency range. Can't change unless you can see it. Just a thought.

How do I use the laptop's monitor without initializing or running windows. I tried to switch to the funciton key that allows that signal.