2407WFP, screen blacks out

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I have a Dell 2407WFP monitor. Today, it developed a problem in that the screen blanks out (goes black) after a while of use. At that point, pressing keys or alt-tabbing or anything else does not help. However, if I unplug the monitor and plug it back in, then the picture returns. Note, I am leaving the computer on, simply unplugging the monitor and plugging it back in.

This problem started when I was playing a video game - World of Warcraft. I have played that game for several months without any problems. In fact, I played it for 20 minutes just fine, until the screen suddenly went black. After this, I had to unplug/replug my monitor several times before I could even have a picture on the screen long enough to click the button to close the game.

At first I thought it was simply a problem with the game. But the problem persisted even when I had closed the game - the screen would blank out and stay blank until I unplugged/replugged the monitor.

I checked and reseated the video cable and graphics card. I downloaded the latest video drivers for my graphics card and installed them. After installation, the computer required a reboot, and even during the reboot process, the screen blanked out 3-4 times, and each time I had to unplug/replug the monitor to get the picture back.

So while it seemed that this was a monitor problem and not a video card or software problem, I decided to do some stress testing. I have a video benchmarking program (SiSoft Sandra Suite), which stress tests the graphics by providing a heavy graphics workload. I ran this program, but it worked just fine, the monitor did not blank out while running it.

Additionally, I had a couple of temperature monitor programs running in the background (SpeedFan and SensorsView Pro), and was logging graphics card and CPU temperatures during these tests. My baseline GPU temperature was 59C, and it rose to 72 C during the stress test. But as I mentioned, the computer passed the stress test just fine, with the monitor not blanking even when the graphics card was at 72 C.

However, at other times it blanks out even when the video card is at 59 or 60 C. This indicates to me that it's not a temperature issue, at least not with the graphics card.

Has anyone had similar problems? What can I do to fix this?