Second monitor help

[Madrun Badrun]

So I got a second monitor to use with mu old Dell 6000 inspirion.  I'm using xp.

The problem is I can not get the two screens to display different desktops.  As in when I click on the identity button both screens show a big "1".  When I go to the options it forces me to make the external my primary display, and only lets me choose the resolution up to what my laptop's max resolution is, not the externals.  When I click on the second monitor and select "extend this my Windows desktop onto this monitor" and hit apply, nothing happens except that the second monitor icon goes fuzzy and says it's not active?

[Brehvolution]

Dell's have a display looking icon in the f5-f8 area. Hit the blue 'FN' button on the lower left of the keyboard and press the f5 or whatever to switch the display mode.

or

Check for a new driver.

[Madrun Badrun]

wait, got some of it.  My problem was that I had hit the crt/lcd button I guess. 

I'm still having the resolution problem.  It won't let me display the full resolution? 

edit:  ya it was hitting that button that caused the problem.  It switched between showing the desktop on only the laptop, on both screens (but shows the same desktop), and only on the external.  To get the second monitor to show anything at all I had to switch to the second option, but then to get it to work as multiple desktops I had to switch back to the first option and then configure the screen, which it wasn't letting me do until I had cycled though the options!  WTF is that about?

[Madrun Badrun]

Is it possible that it can not do a video out with a 1920x1200 resolution?

I can find the option when I go into the dell's setting thing but I can't select the option.

[bork]

Did you check for new drivers? 

Right now I'm just using my external monitor as my primary display with my netbook, but when I was using a MacBook and running bootcamp, I had a lot of difficulty getting an extended monitor set-up going.  Can't remember how I got it working, but after I did it seemed to be too much for the computer to handle and everything ran too slowly on the external monitor window.