x61t external display not working

[dyne]

I have an X61T w/vista and Dell 2005fpw. I've been using the 2 for about a year and have run into this problem intermittently. Normally I can reboot and it'll work itself out.

When I plug in the 2005fpw, both the laptop and 2005fpw detect that I've connected the two. When I apply the settings to the monitor (extended desktop with 1680x1050 resolution), the laptop acts as if everything is normal and working, but nothing displays on the monitor. It detects that the LCD is plugged in and recognizes the resolutions the monitor accepts and everything, it just doesn't seem to output anything.

The monitor stays blank and stays in power save mode (like what happens when windows turns your monitor off after XX minutes).

The monitor works fine with my girlfriends laptop. I tried using another monitor and achieved similar results; the laptop acts as if the display is working ok but nothing is displayed on the screen.

I've tried restarting, reinstalling the most current lenovo drivers, and installing intel's latest 965 drivers.

When I have the monitor plugged in while booting up, nothing is displayed on either screen even though it's set in BIOS to output to both the internal and external monitors. I have to turn off the computer, unplug the external monitor, and start the computer again to get anything on the internal display.

Any ideas? The whole not working before it gets into windows thing is leading me to believe it's a hardware problem