Vid card works with adapter, not directly

Question

I have two monitors available: an old CRT that has VGA connector, and a new Dell E228WFP 22" LCD that has both VGA and DVI connector. My card is ATI Radeon 9000 Pro (DVI and ADC ports). The Dell has worked perfectly for almost a year. The problem began when I wanted to add a riser under the Dell. With the Dell connected and computer on showing perfect video, I disconnected the DVI cord, put the Dell on the floor, put the riser on the desk, put the Dell on the riser, and connected the DVI cord. No video. I have done this type of maneuver a hundred times in the past with various computers and monitors. There is never a glitch unless the resolution is not correct. I can't believe that simply disconnecting and reconnecting the DVI cord will damage a video card. I reset PRAM, no video. I connected the old CRT with a DVI to VGA adapter and it worked great.
Thinking the Dell's DVI cord may have gone bad, I connected the Dell by VGA cord to a PC that has only VGA connection (typical of office PCs). The Dell worked great. I called Dell and asked for a replacement DVI cord. They took a stubborn attitude and insisted on replacing the entire monitor and all its accessories with a refurb monitor. The next day they arrived and we connected the new monitor using the new DVI cord and no video. They tried the monitor on the PC via VGA cable and it worked great (of course -- I already knew that).
Since the card works great with the old CRT plugged into the card's DVI port using a VGA to DVI adapter, does that mean my card is till good? I suppose their can be some difference in the pin out of the adapter and the DVI cord. Is that what I am experiencing, a card that has no video through a normal DVI cord but has video through an adapter?

Answer 1

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I had already reseated the card. There are no bent pins in the connector either on the card or on the cable to the monitor. I even had Dell replace the monitor and the replacement came with a new signal cable. The problem remained.
I finally solved the issue and it is important that all of you at Apple add this step to the troubleshooting list for a Mac with no video:
I restarted holding option (could boot to an OS X install disc, too I'm sure). That resolved the issue immediately. It seems that the hard drive's OS X auto-adjust feature for the resolution did not work. Booting to the Startup Manager (doesn't load the OS X from the hard drive) defaults to some predetermined setting that is display-independent. Then all I had to do was press Return and it has been well since.
It is interesting (and annoying) that resetting PRAM did nothing to resolve this while booting to a non hard drive video input did.