Monitor takes forever to come on

Hi gals and guys, I have been lurking here for a good while and have come accross some great info here. Now, it is I who has a problem.

My monitor seems to be progressively taking longer to come on. Once it is up, no issues, but if I let the PC sleep, or shut it down, it now is taking 30minutes-1 hour before I get any video. I can hear the Windows chime come very soon after turning the computer on so I am pretty sure the operating system has booted up, but the monitor stays black. It is a wide screen monitor and would guess it is >5 years old. When it does finally come on the (it is an LG) the LG logo comes up, the screen goes black, and then comes back on with the Windows desk top. I am thinking the monitor is going out, but am not sure.

My wife has a lap top, but that is the only other PC in the house. Would you advise me to hook the monitor up to the laptop to check it before proceeding with other investigations? It seems the easiest thing to do. I have never hooked up a monitor to a lap top and was wondering if there is anything special I need to do, or will the lap top see the monitor once it is hooked up. This is really where my concern is as if I screw up the wife's lap top......an unhappy wife=an unhappy household. :)

Running an AMD system, gigabyte mb with onboard sound, 16 gigs of ram, GeForce 560GTX video, Caviar Black hd. Not really sure if the monitor is actually LCD (~22" wide screen) as it is fairly old, but I suspect it is.

Any help you fine folk could give an old man would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Ron

Have a friend hook it up to his computer when it is cold.

Hooking up to a laptop can get to be hair pulling sometimes.