EggXpert

past few weeks i've started having some problems with my 640mb 8800gts and its 2 monitors. i have two 19" Hanns G LCDs (model HX192D) which are less then 2 years old using DVI on a 640mb 8800GTS which is almost 3 years old now. i usually don't turn off the pc at night, just the monitors.

two weeks ago (starting on the 1st) when i turned on the monitors, monitor #1 which was in port 1 of the card would just flash on and off. sometimes trying to display the screen, but usually just an incomprehensible mess of colors. rebooted the pc and it worked fine until the next morning when it did it again. this time i simply unplugged the monitors power cord for a few mins and plugged it back in and it worked immediately. that night i swapped the ports the 2 monitors were on (also swapping the cables they used). monitor #1 continued to have the problem in port 2 of the card for a few mornings, deactivating and reactivating the monitor via display settings a few times fixed it those times. at this point i was thinking it was the monitor since it didn't work in either port but then the problem stopped happening.

on the 9th i reformatted (had gotten the lovely vundo virus) and installed updated drivers for everything. problem still was gone.

around wednesday last week i started turning off the pc at night (no longer a need to keep it on) and the problem started happening again. but this time with monitor #2 which was in port 1 of the card due to the earlier swap, and monitor #1 in port 2 was working flawlessly. rebooting the pc didn't work, nor did using display settings. often times it wouldn't even respond to me hitting the power button on the monitor. in the end i had to spend 10-15 mins unplugging and plugging back in the power cord to to get it to turn on. odd thing is that sometimes after unplugging the power cord, the monitor would stay lit up with the power light glowing and a messed up partial image on the screen.

today i spent half an hour messing with it and it wouldn't come up. put monitor #2 back into port 2 and it still messed up. sometimes it flashes even when the video cable is unplugged. sometimes it'll stop flashing and say no input signal when the video cable is unplugged and then start flashing again when its plugged back in. i just had it sitting unplugged for the past 10 mins, plugged in only the power cord and it started flashing again.

so...i have to ask...wtf is going on?
the fact that both monitors didn't have errors until they were put into port 1 tells me its the video card.
but the fact that the monitors will continue to mess up after removing them from port 1 and after leaving them sit unplugged for a while tells me its the monitors, especially since putting a working monitor in port 1 wont result in any errors for a while and a monitor thats having errors wont work in port 2 or in a different PC for a while

are both monitors and the video card failing?
could the video card be failing and causing the monitors to retain bad info and fail as well?

The video card does have the ability to change some of the monitors settings, so its possible its changing them to something that they can not run at.

If you run them on another PC a few days will they still do it?