Travel Technology - How to make second monitor work correctly with an old XP laptop?

I've been a mac user for several years now, and I am slowly forgetting the basics of how to troubleshoot windows machines.

Anyway, I have an old Sony laptop which I use to run eSignal. The OS is Windows Xp Pro (still the best windows, right?).

I recently purchased a widescreen flat screen monitor to plug in, so I can see my charts better.

Problem is, the laptop will not display anything on 1/4 of the screen, probably because the video card on the laptop was built before extra-wide screen monitors were introduced.

Is there any clever way to get around this problem?

I know it's a shot in the dark, but any suggestion would be appreciated.

Only thing I can think of is to see if an updated driver for the video card is available.

Check to see if your monitor manufacturer offer a monitor driver. If your computer has a DVI interface, use that.

If all else fail, you might want to try a software called PowerStrip from EnTech. It allows you to set custom resolution and refresh rate on any screen as long as your hardware can handle it. You will need to do some trial and error to tweak the settings to get it to work. I used to do that when I try to get my PC to display properly on a 16x9 CRT RPTV.

http://entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm