monitor goes into hibernation when browser goes up

[dsmorion]

I have a sony vaio with windows xp home and sp1, I have nortons, and windows updated, and I run adaware and microsofts spyware removal tool. I recently changed to earthlink and whether its related or not, this problem began at about that time; frequently after I connect to the internet, when I go to raise the browser, (it does it in opera and firefox), orsometimes after that when I click on a bookmark, or sometimes just by hitting enter for a search, my computer monitor goes into hibernation mode. The computer is still running and I am still connected to the internet, but I can't bring my monitor screen back up unless I unplug it and replug it in. The monitor looks fine, and works fine otherwise, and this still happens even after I turned the hibernation setting off. Also this has not happened when I bring the browser up when I'm off line.

I've run Norton's and the spyware tools and Norton's can find nothing, the spyware finds an occassional item which I then delete.

Much thanks for any help.

David

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

What display adapter do you have? Do you have the correct and latest driver for your display adapter?

You explicitly mention Opera and Firefox; does that mean it does not happen with Internet Explorer?

[dsmorion]

I am using an ATI Radeon 9700, which I have been using for a year now. It hasn't caused any problems before and otherwise works very well. There is a new update that just came out, and I did install it about two weeks ago, but after I started to have this problem I restored my system to before the install...

It does not appear to happen with explorer, I can't say for sure that it won't but have'nt seen it yet. I am reluctant to use explorer because it's vulnerabilities are well known.

Someone mentioned an IRQ conflict, but I wonder why that would suddenly occur.

David