Cheap monitor cabling (or overly-long cabling) is the primary cause of the signal degradation. If you're using thin, flimsy video cables such as those sold by CompUSA, Radio Shack, and the like you'll almost certainly experience the problems you describe.
Yzk commented: Only W2k Server has an administrative tools menu, though there still is an event viewer in W2k pro only than in c:\windows -Yzk -4