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[Makbeth]

I have a dual-view setup on my primary computer.  My primary monitor is a ViewSonic from 2008, and my secondary is an LG from 2006.  Both are LCD.  My primary PC is running Vista with an on-board nvidia video card.  Everything was fine until one morning I turn on my secondary monitor and it blacks out after displaying the screen for about a third of a second, but the power light stays blue and there's no "no signal" warning.  I've found no reliable way of getting it to display normally except by turning it on and off and pressing the input source button (there's no second input for this monitor) multiple times.  Eventually it comes back on, and sometimes it seems like switching to fullscreen in an application and back will encourage it, but nothing ever works twice.  Once it starts displaying normally, it continues to do so until the monitor is shut off for more than a few  minutes, as happens when I go to sleep, and then the fun starts all over again.  Also, it seems like it's taking longer to get it back to normal each time.

I've had no significant software changes or updates recently.  Only two significant things have happened, each of which may be a coincidence:

1) I got my secondary PC up and running after a months-long downtime, and it's outputting to my primary monitor as an alternate input (it is not connected in any way to the malfunctioning monitor, and the malfunction occurs whether the secondary PC is powered, unpowered, hooked up to a monitor, or not.  If it changed anything, it was a persistent change that continues even after it was removed from the setup.

2) My xbox had been getting red-rings, and I had been using the towel trick to revive it, with increasing frequency, until the interval between rings dropped to less than two  hours.  I had been using it mostly to play DVDs by this point, and finally shelved the damn thing and started using Windows Media Player on my primary PC to watch movies.  The first instance of this malfunction actually occurred while watching a movie in fullscreen on the primary monitor with the second monitor off.  After finishing and trying to turn on the second monitor again, I had this issue but it went away after fiddling with fullscreen mode on both monitors (couldn't see what I was doing very well but was able to do it blind).

This problem occurs even during boot up, as the BIOS always displays on the secondary monitor for some reason.  I was therefore able to see that this problem occurs even before Windows loads, which suggests that it is not a driver issue (I think. I don't know much about video drivers but I'm pretty sure they don't come into play until the OS they are installed on loads).

It has been difficult to find a similar case on google, but it seems as though 5 years is a long enough period of service for a monitor that it can start to break down at this point and exhibit behavior like this.  Something to do with the capacitors or whatever.

Was wondering if I should bother troubleshooting this or if this raises red flags for anyone who might know if I should just get a replacement.

Thanks, appreciate anyone investing the time to read this.

[Stargrasper]

It sounds to me like a faulty connection.  Check the cables.

And by "check the cables", I don't mean "make sure it's plugged in".  That's step one, but what could be happening is an internal failure of the cables.  If you just can't get it working, steal the cables from the other monitor and try it.  While doing that, you can just swap the cables entirely and see if it causes failures in the first monitor.  It could also be an internal connection problem in the monitor or computer.  Over time, wires get loose.  Some of them you can fix.  Some you can't.