Recently something fell on my laptop and the LCD burst so it now looks like someone has put black paint all over the monitor. It's not covered under warranty and proving very expensive to repair. My question is, can i just remove the monitor from the laptop and buy a display for a desktop? would the laptop work without any display attached to it? would there be any potential problems?
Buy a separate monitor and plug it into the back of the laptop.
Most laptops have a button you can press to say if you want the image on the laptop display, the monitor, or both. On my IBM latop it is Fn and F7 (it is marked on the F7 button)
Have a look in the documentation that came with the laptop to see what button you prees.