It’s a power supply problem. It’s been going on for awhile. The power light goes into a slow blink, and briefly even shows the monitor image. By playing with the power cord and unplugging it and cursing at it and turning the button on and off, he’s been able to get it to work eventually before, but not tonight. Once it’s on, it works fine, as long as it never gets shut off or hibernates. This morning he shut his computer down because of the potential for thunderstorms, and now he regrets it.
My boss’s monitor, same model Viewsonic, had the same thing happen a couple months ago. He called tech support, and they told they know what the problem is, but he’d have to send it back, at his own expense, to be fixed... and be without a monitor for 4-6 weeks. :-\
~ecurbh