2nd Monitor goes straight to standby?

I just set up this old toshiba in my basement; out of boredom I decided to attach an old lcd to it. The following is what happens.

-The computer turns on. Laptop LCD goes black, external monitor shows the windows XP loading screen.
-After loading screen the external monitor goes blank(into standby mode) and the main laptop lcd now shows windows logging in and then my desktop.
-Windows display properties recognizes that a 2nd monitor is plugged in, and I can even move a window over to the second screen (where it becomes lost since that screen is in standby).
-When the extenal's VGA is unplugged it turns on for a moment to announce that it has lost input.

The GPU is an ancient NVIDEA GeForce FX Go5200 32mb

Any thoughts, or need more info?

 

From what your describing, it looks like everything is alright-hardware wise.
Now you just have to configure windows to use your second monitor.

Anyways. Right click your desktop, and go into display properties. Now Go to the last tab in that window (I can't recall the name of that tab). This tab should let you set your screen resolutions. In this tab you can select different monitors. Depending on what you want, you can "use this display as your primary monitor" or can "extend my desktop onto this screen." These settings will enable you to set one as primary and secondary. respectively.

If you need more info letme know. Good Luck!

 

That's exactly what I did right away