Help Logging In broken monitor

Kari said:

Easy, fast and free temporary workaround:

Boot laptop, wait until you are sure the broken laptop screen is displaying Welcome screen (although you are not seeing it ).
Press Down Arrow + Enter to select your account tile (bottom left as you mentioned), type the password and hit Enter. In a few moments you enter the desktop and your HDMI TV shows it; if not press Win + P to enter display selection and press Right Arrow + Enter to get the external display activated. Notice: if your account has no password, Right Arrow + Enter brings you directly to desktop.

Some tips for others facing similar problem:
- Welcome screen defaults to first account, the tile displayed on top left
- Accounts are shown in alphabetical order according to the account name given when account was first created. Any later account name change does not change this order, i.e. if original accounts were Adam, Bert and Cain and you later change Bert's account name to Zorro, they are still shown in original order Adam, Zorro (original Bert) and Cain
- If you have 1 to 5 user accounts, tiles are presented in one row. Six to 10 accounts are presented in two rows, 6 accounts 3+3 (top + bottom rows), 7 = 4+3, 8 = 4+4, 9 = 5+4 and 10 = 5+5
- Starting from default account, you can select other account tiles by using Arrow keys. Right / Left Arrow keys do not skip row when pressed at the end of the row, instead you need to use Up / Down Arrows to change the row

A few examples:
- On a 4 account PC, to "blindly" login to third account press two times Right Arrow followed by Enter, type the password and hit Enter
- On a 7 account PC, to "blindly" login to 6th account (bottom row second from left) press Down Arrow + Right Arrow + Enter, type the password and hit Enter

Kari

Thanks so much for this advice! I've been scouring the internet trying to figure out how to log on to my laptop without being able to see the welcome screen, since my laptop screen is broken and the external monitor wouldn't display anything until I'd logged in. After coming across your post, I finally managed to log on using Down Arrow + Enter, which activated the external monitor. Now at least I know it's only the screen that's broken!

Thanks again.