Monitor issues

I am puzzled on how to fix this one. my monitor went out on my Acer laptop and I am having fun trying to see a screen so that I can reboot the system. It has crashed. I cannot plug it into anything to view anything. The monitor does work, but I can only see that Microsoft XP is on it. I cannot view system properties in order to boot the computer... I am in the process of putting it on a network and attempting to boot it....but I do not know how to do that. I am an aspiring learner when it comes to stuff like that.... I would like some input on how I may resolve this conflict.