Random screen blackouts

I recently installed a new Audigy 2 ZS (Platinum) sound card on my computer. I was sure to completely remove my old SB Live card before I installed it. I'm now experiencing an odd problem where the screen will randomly go blank for a second periodically. I am running Windows XP and have tried to get help elsewhere and have the following information:

- I tried updating and installing drivers for both my sound card and my video card several times.

- It was suggested that something is trying to change the screen resolution quickly to and from something other than what I have, and after experimenting, I think that this is it.

- I have tried closing and disabling all applications related to both the sound and graphics card (ending manually and disabling from the boot.ini)

- Tech support for the card told me to check the IRQ settings for it. It uses IRQ 18 and it shares this setting with a 'Universal standard PCI to USB adapter.' I'm not sure if this is the problem.

Does anyone have any idea?

PS - It just flashed again.

 

It was suggested that something is trying to change the screen resolution quickly to and from something other than what I have, and after experimenting, I think that this is it.

I have a mitubishi CRT. It will self-degauss every 15 minutes to 2 hours, depending on humidity, phase of the moon, cosmic ray frequency or some other unkown factor. This manifests as a gentle 'snap' noise, the screen flickers, exactly the same way ti does when i switch resolutions.

 

The thing is, though, it makes no noise. It just goes blank. Nothing else happens at all. When I switch resolutions from my nvidia tray icon it does the exact same thing. It just goes blank. No noise, no flicker, just a second of black. Then it stays in 1024 x 768.

 

I'm going to remove all the parts in question and ensure that they have clean connections and make sure everything is secure very soon.