Monitor stops receiving a signal at the login screen Win Vista

When I boot my computer, everything appears normal until I reach the login screen. The instant the Windows Vista logo would appear, the screen goes black because it has stopped receiving a signal. I had this problem once before, about a month ago, but solved it by re-inserting the Graphics card.

So far I have tried: re-inserting the graphics card, which did nothing; booting in safe mode, which worked, (I'm using it with networking now); and re-installing the graphics driver, which failed because it, "failed to load the detection driver"-assumably because I'm in safe mode.

Changes since the last successful boot: none relevant except, perhaps, installing the mp3 codecs for Audacity. Last session I beat Portal 2, used firefox (just browsing...facebook, google, and links from google, no downloads), used ITunes, used Audacity (clipping and exporting mp3 files), and probably used several other minor tools, such as 7-Zip and notepad. I did not change any settings.

I suspect it is a hardware related issue because last time I encountered this error, that was the problem, and I can't think of a single recent software change that could've caused this. So, awesome techy people of this forum, what should I do to try and fix this problem?

System Specs:
OS: Windows Vista 64 bit
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33 GHz
Motherboard: Unknown
Memory: 6GB RAM
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 3450
Notes: This computer is around 2.5 years old. I recently re-installed the operating system (concurrently with the last time I had this problem). The drivers installed perfectly at the time and the system has run beautifully since then. It still does, except for this problem with the signal not being sent to the monitor. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Traveler
 
When you lose video as the computer enters Windows, this means the the video resolution is incorrect for the monitor connected. Have you tried another monitor?
 
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