Dell Inspiron 8600 - Cannot Read Parts of Display

I am fairly certain the monitor used on this Dell was critized for being hard
to read. Unfortunately, I did not know my eyesight was about to get bad soon
after buying it. However, I have Windows XP Professional and have tried all
sorts of settings using the Accessibility feature on the control panel to
improve the display. The worst problem is that blue fonts often just fade
into white background. If I try high contrast and other backgrounds etc.
something else will not be visible. This system has an NVIDIA GEforce4 4200
Go Dell Mobile 64 mb RAM video adapter. I have tried to use an older desk
top monitor from my Dell desktop, but the small laptop display is what shows
on the larger monitor. Questions: First, how do I go back to factory default
settings for the display so I can start over if needed? Any suggestions as
to a systematic way to try and resolve display problems with font size,
contrast, brightness? There are so many possibilities that one change will
cause problems with another. Finally, Will I just have to give up and buy a
better, larger, monitor that can use best features of XP? This won't help me
when using laptop away from desk, but will help at home, I suppose. Thanks