When I turn on my computer, the monitor does not detect the signal. Now the weird thing is, the monitor actually quits sleep mode, searches for a signal, doesn't find anything, and enters sleep mode again. Then, when I restart my computer WITHOUT turning it off (by using the keyboard at the XP user logon screen) the monitor detects the signal and everything runs smoothly. Basically, once the PC is on, a restart ALWAYS ensures that the monitor will work fine. I don't know what the hell is going on. Thanks in advance.

i must be stupid. how do you know your at the xp login screen, if theres no monitor signal??

Check the pins that plug into the CPU comming from the monitor cable, see if by chance one of them are bent.

good question how do you know your at the logon screen. are you running a dual monitor setup? Is the video card capable of running two monitors? stabbing in the dark here but it might be you have the monitor plugged into a secondary monitor port of a dual head card. When the windows video driver kicks in it enables the second port.

I know I'm at the XP logon screen from experience :P I know how long I have to wait and what keys I have to press to restart it. Thanks for bringing up the dual monitor questions. It's not the pins, because if I run two monitors (it's a Radeon 9700, by the way) both of them experience the same problem. And I know it's not a hardware problem since EVERY SINGLE TIME I restart the monitors work fine.