
The random behavior was because I was using the default driver. Web searches at the time confirmed this a common problem, but seen only on the then-new Windows release I was running and could be traced to Dell having dropped support and not releasing a driver. In my case, it's two Dell 2405FPW panels side-by-side on my desktop and the problem only presented on my left monitor. The interval between could hours or it could seconds (almost constant flickering.) I've struggled with exactly that same behavior in one of my monitors, where it randomly goes dark for a couple seconds, then comes back on. It's possible you can solve this with a driver from Dell for your display. I believe it's most likely a bug in the generic Windows display driver.
