A difficult task - replacing my LCD monitor

All I want is just to upgrade my LCD monitor to a 20" wide screen using DVI input. It has taken me hours to resolve the issue. Maybe I should be glad that I have the issue resolved finally.

Below what happened and steps I have taken,
  1. New monitor bought. The first thing I did is, of course, to connect the power cable and DVI cable. Hoping that that's it.

  2. The screen worked fine at first and I have no problem to use the resolution 1680 x 1050 (thanks to XP SP2 and the ATI driver).

  3. After work for a while, the screen blanked from time to time for no apparent reason. It happened more often when I was playing video files. I thought it was loosen cable or monitor configuration problem. Have then gone thru the OSD to see if there is anything strange. The problem does not happen when I am using the VGA cable.

  4. I updated my ATI display driver to Catalyst 7.5. No luck either and the screen keeps on blinking. I did a search on the web and notice this affected quite some people as well. There doesn't seem to a solution. And it seemed to affect only certain people. I was really disappointed and decided to keep using the VGA cable. And then, I went to sleep.

  5. When I woke up, I decided to take a final try and update the Motherboard BIOS. I was using ASUS M2A-VM HDMI. I updated my 0302 bios to 0502. And this works! The ASUS website said it has improved display compatibility with Vista but I never know that it could help myXP machine as well.
The experience I have is completely different from my expectation. With all the complicated software we now have. Any seemingly easy task could become lots of work.

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