Inaccessible virtual terminals (monitor problem?)

[Victor Munoz <vmunoz@macul.ciencias.uchile.cl>]

Hello. During the last couple of weeks I've had to live with the xwindows
virtual terminal only, as I cannot use the text ones. When I switch with
Ctrl-Alt-Fn, n=1,...,6, I only get some monitor information about frequency.
It seems to be complaining (sorry, it's in Japanese!), but it's a little
weird that if it is a problem with the electronics, it only complains in
text mode. Does this make sense to anyone?

Rebooting solves the problem, for a while though.

I tried to reset terminals with 

ps aux | grep getty | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -HUP

but the problem didn't go. I don't have a spare monitor to try now, and
would like to try any "operating system" solution possible before trying to
get a new monitor. 

Thanks for any help,

       	       	    		Victor