PowerBook G4 12" mini-DVI strange behavior

Greetings everyone,
I'm turning to you guys in these forums as a mean of last resort. My issue being a connector, which is not functioning as it should. The problem will be described in the following part.
The Issue:
I bought a mini-DVI, refurbished, though there were and are no problems with the piece and I'll explain why in a second.
Upon plugging the mini-DVI to VGA dongle into the PowerBook G4 12" mini-DVI port the external 22" LG Flatron display does nothing. I go into System Preferences>Display and hit the 'Detect Displays' as that seems to me to be the obvious solution in how to detect an external monitor/display in Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8. Still, no evidence of anything happening on the external display. Tough, the machine appears to lag for 2 second when the button is pressed, though the monitor remains undetected.
However, when I restart the PowerBook the display gets detected on boot when the Apple logo appears on the main display, being the laptop's. That, reassures me that the Logic Board and the mini-DVI to VGA adapter are all right. After the system is running and I'm in the GUI, everything runs as it should. Mirroring, Extended Desktop everything, you name it.
BUT, when I put the machine to sleep the external monitor goes to sleep with it, which is fine, but after I wake the machine up, the external display remains undetected and no 'Detect Displays' helps or either putting it to sleep again. If you think that I should, boot up the machine, put it to sleep connect the display and wake it up using an USB peripheral, think again, no luck there buddy.
What is curious though, is that the same thing happens with a projector at my University, but over there the trick with starting it up already connected does not work.
That leaves me with a puzzling situation and an unsolved mystery.
Please, I beg you, O, great wisdom of the Apple forums come and show me what am I supposed to do, to get rid of this terrible extended display peril. I'll be forever in your debt.
Thank you, so very much!
Tom.

Thanks a bunch, but that did not help. I've tried to do that before, except vacuuming the connectors. That did not help either.
The monitor I'm testing it with has only a VGA output. Unfortunately, I thought that this has been just because of the monitor's lack of DVI, but I was wrong. As I was saying, I attempted to use it with a projector over at school, it had a VGA output as well, but the projector didn't even pick up the PowerBook on restart. It just showed that it was detecting it for a couple of seconds and then it showed 'No Device Plugged In'. So, there you go. This is what I call a predicament.
I've read on a different forum that this issue may be due to a protocol transfer between the mini-DVI and VGA input of the device that I want to plug into. I am in an environment, which is predominantly dominated by machines, which need either a VGA input or output.
Isn't there a software patch for this problem somewhere?

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