since yesterday my monitor keeps dimming a little and then it goes back to normal and flickers some. is my monitor going bad or somehting? i thought it might not be getting enough electricity so i moved it to another plug, still does it. could it be my graphics card isn't pushed in all the way or something? i made sure all connections were tight.

Sounds like it is going bad. I don't know.

Do you here any light crackling or arcing while this is happening? It sounds like the High Voltage supply is breaking down or "leaking" current at times. This is not a good sign!

I agree. It sounds like the flyback circuit is going bad. One thing you can do is pull the case off. Then reconnect the monitor and turn the room lights off. Turn on the PC and look for arcing around the transformer or any circuit boards, plus look for an aura around the "neck" of the CRT itself. If you see any of these just junk the monitor.

There should be on the flyback transformer, two controls marked screen and focus. They will have small knobs or a slot for a screwdriver. Turn these back and forth from stop to stop several times. Sometimes these just get dirty and by moving them you will clean enough crud out to help. If your monitor is more than 4 or 5 years old, it's probably on it's way out.

it is only 2-3 years old. i get no noises while it is doing it just some dimming and flickering. i thought it might be my video card. nope.....all that stuff up there can't cause a fire or anything can it? my monitor is a viewsonic E90Fb.

No fire danger, very high voltage but very low current. You have a High Voltage fly back thinking about going south (it may be breaking down internally). If you farm it out for repair, it is cheaper in the long run to replace it. No extended warranty on it? Also, if you reduce the res and or refresh rate you will lighten the load on it and may get you more time with it. In its current state, it "could" fail anytime completely.

Sounds like a bad rectifier? Just a guess, I've never had much luck fixing monitors, I generally just pull them apart for components. The reason you see dimming and flickering could also be the cathode heavy metal oxide coating wearing out, or inter-electrode arcing inside the electron gun. If you open it up, don't get too close to any circuitry going to the CRT neck or flyback transformer, there are very high voltages floating around in there. Look for 3 or 4 small glass bulbs with two wires on the circuit board at the CRT neck, if they glow purple or white intermittently during operation then the voltage is going out of range (could be focus, screen, or grid voltage, I'm not sure which one.) In this case you may want to sell the monitor to a repair shop for spare parts.

i turned down the refresh rate and it hasn't done it in 2 days. maybe thats all it was.