I have this LCD monitor that often doesn't turn on when connected to various computers. However, with this laptop, I can turn it on.

The way I do it is I run the nvidia-settings, and configure it as a 2nd display (Twinview) , and then click apply. That would work. If I save the settings, restart the machine, it won't work (so I have to do the apply trick above again). Doing this way, it works reliably without any problem.

Although it's not much with Linux, today, I have seen OpenSuse 11 did some great things for me. I have two wireless cards works without even doing any configuration on it. These didn't work, or partially work on Windows XP. Then I thought I would toss this display, and it works.

Linux has gone a long away. Thank you!

Now, back to the question, why do you think the display shows such behavior? When turn on, it says no signal found. This is a digital DVI interface for the connector. Could it be as simple as the wire is bad, and one of the pin has a bad signal (such as the controlling pin).
I don't really know, just throwing things around. However, I am sure the guru who write video drivers would know what is going on.