I am sure many of us have done this , had a broken screen on your laptop .
I bought a laptop at a charity shop that they were told was dead , and there was no charger , so I bought it cheap and took it home only to find out the screen is broken , it lights up at least !

Anyway how can I hook up an external VGA or HDMI monitor to see if it boots up , I cannot see anything on the screen , just light and darker areas , what keystrokes etc

I do not want to put on a new laptop screen until I can see if it boots up and is not locked , or could I just run it off the external monitor ?

Thanks for your ideas