monitor or video card?

Two times in the last week my monitor (a KDS visual sensations CRT) has come on with the image looking like an hourglass (wide at the top and bottom, pinched in the center). This happened imediately upon boot up and both times rebooting has returned the monitor to normal, leaving the computer running does not bring the problem back. Which is more likely, that my monitor is beginning to fail or maybe my graphics card (a saphire, ATI radeon 7000) is failing? Is there some way (other than swaping my monitor out and trying another as this seems so far to be an intermitent problem and may not arise when a new monitor is conected) to check and see which it may be?

 

Have you checked you cable connection? Make sure it's tight. Loose screw and vibration can cause intermittent problems.

 

check the monitor cables, it must be problems of the monitor not the video card

 

Yeah, I agree. It's probably not the video card. I'd say it's either a loose cable connection or a bad monitor. And the only way to test for a bad monitor is to plug your computer into a known good one. Although, this doesn't sound like too bad of a problem yet.

 

Yeah, you're all right it was the monitor. Just thought I'd jump back on and mention though ...... this not to bad a problem yet resulted in my monitor dieing completely this morning