This periodic problem predates the Color Sync report I posted about previously, but it happened again today. Once every month or two, the monitor (a cheap LCD from HannSpree) refuses to wake up in the usual way, which is by moving the mouse, or hitting a key. I end up turning the monitor off and back on, and I'm good to go.

Energy Saver is set to Never as far as putting the computer to sleep. The display sleep setting is 15 minutes, as if that matters(?). Put hard disk asleep is not checked. OS 10.5.8

I'm I missing something? Should I try to "fix" this? My concern is that one of these days, it won't wake up. I tend to think that this is a software glitch though, not hardware. Agree/disagree??

I thought LCD monitors didn't suffer from burn in like the old CRT's. So why sleep the monitor at all?

My LCD display consumes 34 watts of power when on, and 1 watt when sleeping...so I suppose someone who'd turn off a forty-watt lamp to save energy when not using it might be similarly inclined toward a computer's display.

But they do. The technical reasons are different, but the effect is the same. Google for "lcd ghost".
Here's an Apple technote about it:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2807

I'm not too old to learn something new!!!!!! Thanks Mike.

Have you got another monitor that you can hook up? That might tell you whether it's software related. By fix this, do you mean replace the monitor if you can't determine it is the software? What would that gain you? It might not ever "not wake up." Unless it's a critical system that can't stand the down time for monitor replacement if it ever does "not wake up."

Well, the other monitors I have are older and the quality of the image is poor. Both were failing, and are just hanging around until I find the right time to dispose of them properly. I would be reluctant to use one for a whole month or two and put up with the dramatic difference just to see if the sleep issue is present.

By "fix it" I mean prevent the "fast asleep mode" from happening. Just hoping someone else knows something that I don't.

The down time if it ever fails to wake up after power off / power on depends on the time of day. If the stores are open, it's only an hour or two. And, if it happens before the extended warranty expires, it's only a dollar or two.

I have my desktop set to randomly use several photos, and it changes every 5 minutes I think. I keep all my desktop stuff in one folder, so there are only 5 items on my desktop to "ghost". You could do something similar, and set the monitor to never sleep. Cost to keep the monitor powered up pales in comparison to the cost of a new monitor.

You mentioned warranty. How bout take it back and tell them it doesn't wake up sometimes. See if they offer a replacement.

I've just remembered that I once saw those symptoms on a Samsung LCD. As it turned out, the monitor sometimes (very seldom) just could not "decide" which signals to use - analog or digital (both were supplied by the dvi cable). It never happened after power on, only sometimes if video signals were off while power was on for some time. The fix in my case was to change the monitors "signal type" from "automatic" to "manual/digital".

That's a thought about the warranty. I'll have to keep that in my back pocket. Another one: because of the warranty, the cost of replacement could be substantially less than having the monitor powered up all the time!

I don't see settings for "signal type" in the Displays pane of System Preferences. I'm not sure how to check on what you're telling me. Is that perhaps something set by a menu of your monitor? I have input settings of VGA or HDMI. VGA is the one "selected".

Yes, I was talking abot settings done from the monitor's own menu.
In my case a DVI-I cable was used, so both analog signals (like on vga) and digital ones were sent to the monitor. Here I set the choice to manual/digital.
In your case all that doesn't seem to apply, as you've set the input to VGA. That leaves no "choice" on the monitor...

So I guess the bottom line, from this discussion at least, is live with it until it dies. Hopefully that will occur before the extended warranty expires. I've never had a monitor to last as long as this warranty is for, so the odds are on my side.

The cursor freezes every once in awhile too, maybe every 60-90 days. My solution to that is to unplug it from the extension cable and plug it back in. So far, that's fixed it every time.