okay, I have sat around pondering for a while what happened here.
I built my arcade cabinet about 7 years ago, and its run perfect, not a bit of trouble out of it really.
I set it up originally with a vga splitter coming out of the video card, so i could hook up a monitor and keyboard etc set up on a bench next to it, for setting up the whole thing and maintaining it.
my original (programming) monitor was an old 19" crt. everything ticked just like it should. both monitors lit up, everything was gravy.
but the cab worked so well i eventually disconnected the extra monitor, and changed to a wireless keyboard and mouse so i could just use the arcade monitor for minor maintenance.
well, i recently decided to add a lot of new stuff to it and decided to set up a second monitor again.
i hooked up an old 15" lcd to it, and POOf, next day when i booted it the video was trashed. its all garbled now.
my best guess is that i confused the heck out of windows by having a crt and an lcd hooked up at the same time.
whatever though, i want my video back.