Could it be a dying monitor?

[cst1992]

Hi, everyone.
Yesterday it so happened that my monitor went black. Everything else was fine, just, out of the blue, poof.
I restarted the PC and nothing showed after the boot screen(The DEL to enter Setup screen).
But I sensed the computer was active. So I restarted again.
This time it booted into Windows, and after a few minutes, black again.
I took out my Gainward 650 out, put my old 210 in, and restarted, installed drivers afresh. I thought it was solved, but same problem.
Later I discovered that the monitor would come back whenever I disconnected and reconnected my monitor cable to the PC or monitor.

One thing to note is that the monitor just goes black, and the light remains green, doesn't turn orange. Nor does it show 'No signal'. It just goes black and stays that way.
I'm using my 650 again now, I kind of know it's not the card.

What could be the problem? The monitor will be 7 years old in a few days(I bought it bundled with the rest of the computer in May 2008).

Model: Acer AL1916W

The monitor is connected to the rest of the PC via a VGA cable. It could also be the cable, I couldn't try any other as I don't have a spare VGA, and the monitor doesn't have any other port.

What now?

 

[Eximo]

Cable first. Might also have a loose pin in the monitor's connector as well. Little harder to troubleshoot female connectors, but a close inspection with a light might reveal an out of position pin.

Might be time to consider an upgrade to a monitor with digital inputs.

 

[cst1992]

I'm getting a HDMI one in less than a month, so this is it until then. I had an old CRT but it was gathering dust so gave it away few months ago.

 

[cst1992]

New cable costs INR 100. Not too expensive, but significant. I'd avoid spending that much if I could help it.
I also tried switching the heads of the cable, but didn't help.

 

[Eximo]

It could just be plain monitor failure. That isn't exactly the highest end product. Acer does make some nice monitors, but in that price bracket, something has to give. Bad capacitors is the most common failure of cheaper monitors. If you are somewhat familiar with electronics repair it might be a simple part replacement. However, since this appears to be a CCFL backlight monitor there are dangerous high voltage circuits in there.

 

[cst1992]

AFAIK it's something like a 19" TFT matrix lcd display or something like that.
Considering it's a 7 year old monitor, I'm not surprised it's gone out now.
So, a new monitor then? I don't want to connect a new monitor to the cable only to find out the old monitor was fine.
Any way to rule out the cable as the issue?