My display has turned sideways

Q My daughter’s dog jumped up and onto my knee while I was using my laptop, causing my hands to hit various keys at random. As a result the screen turned sideways. I have no idea what keys I might have pressed and less still what I need to do now to rectify the problem. Can you help?
Elizabeth Reader

A Most modern graphics cards are able to rotate their display output. This allows monitors to be used in both portrait and landscape orientations (because some displays can be physically rotated in this way).

You didn’t tell us anything about your computer, other than that it’s a laptop. Being a laptop, though, the chances are that it uses integrated graphics hardware made by Intel. If this is the case, then keyboard shortcuts can be used to rotate the display. Hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys on the keyboard and then tap the cursor (arrow) keys – a press of the up arrow should restore the correct screen orientation.

However, these keyboard shortcuts are not universal, so will not work with all graphics cards and drivers. If your laptop has non-Intel graphics hardware, you may need to look for a different way to change the rotation.

Again, you didn’t tell us the version of Windows installed on the PC but essentially, you need to access the graphics card’s driver settings. To do this in Windows 7, for example, click Start, then Control Panel, Hardware and Sound and then Display.

Now click the Change display settings link on the left-hand side followed by the Advanced settings. Now click the tabs at the top of the Properties dialogue box to explore – you’re looking for a ‘rotate display’ entry, the options for which should hopefully be self-explanatory.