The churchs Media shout PC uses 2 monitors. For years it has been working flawlessly, I have kept it up to date both hardward and virus/software. Added nothing but needed software Media shout, Avast!, Office 2007, Nero, paint shop pro, vlc, foobar. So the last month every now and then the main monitor which starts up after XP logs in stays in sleep mode. Now I know it is booting up as the 2nd monitor shows it booting before XP logs in and switches. A reboot fixes it so far. I have switched monitors which I thought fixed it, but just today it did it again. I can not risk this happening on a Sunday and not having it start at all, which is my worry. Can it be a video card issue, that is dying? How to test? Any ideas are appreciated.

How do you have the two monitors hooked up? if your getting sleep mode on the monitor that is probably not a problem with the monitor itself but possibly a problem with the adapter being used or a bent or broken pin or not being plugged in properly is the monitors lcd or crt

At the moment there are 2 LCD hooked up. The original was a large CRT. Then for 2 weeks I hooked up a temp smaller CRT which showed no problems. I traded it with a LCD from the office on Friday and today had the problem again. Now I been thinking the same thing, what if there is a bad connection on one of the pins on the card, it could be that is why the 2nd temp crt didn't have the problem as its pins may have made better contact. The other thought is both the original and current LCD are set to higher resolution then the 2nd temp crt and that may be a issue with XP and service pack 3. What do you think? I have checked the connection on the back and can see no loose or damaged pins, I even replaced the cable with a brand new one. So it would have to be in the card. Oh yes and the connection is the standard VGA cable.

I'm not sure if you have it hooked up this way but you can check the settings and make sure that the pc is recognizing two monitors

Ok! I hope that fixes it. I got a adapter and reversed the connections and changed them in XP as well. Now the boot monitor is also the main monitor. Of course it has only been a couple days but I have a good feeling. I think it was a issue of monitor resolution from low on one to high on the other. Thx for the support!

Good Job!