This method depends a lot on just what controls are available in your monitor or software.

1. Make sure you have gone through "Preparing the Monitor".
2. Review the monitor's built-in settings, selecting whichever mode gives a choice of Gamma and Color temperature. If there isn't one, skip to 4.
3. Choose Gamma = 2.2 and Color Temperature = 6500K. These are standard for both sRGB and aRGB. Note there may be good reasons to use a different color temperature, depending on final presentation environment for the image.
4. If there are no such settings, choose "sRGB" or "aRGB" (preferred) presets.
5. (Assuming Windows XP) In Control Panel/Display/Settings/Advanced/Color Management set as default a profile matching your monitor's color gamut. This will probably be an sRGB profile. You need this so Color Management has a target color space to work with. If your monitor has an aRGB gamut, use one of those profiles instead. Note, the standard choice of profiles you find in Control Panel are really just color spaces. There is no calibration data.
6. Use the "camera method" to set over-all brightness in the 90 - 120 cd/sq.m range. It is possible that if you do not have a Custom mode or had to use a preset mode as in Step 4 that there is no brightness setting available. If so, try going into the video adaptor utility and setting brightness with the slider there.
7. When photo editing, be sure you are in the monitor mode where color temperature and Gamma were selected as in Steps 3 or 4.

This method obviously depends a lot on how accurate monitor options such as color temperature and Gamma are. There is also the matter of the color channel sliders influencing color temperature. If you are in a mode where you can set color temperature as in Step 3 or in a "canned" sRGB/aRGB mode, the monitor should know enough to over-ride any slider settings.  Furthermore, make sure the video adapter utility does not have some color bias active. Everything in there should be off/neutral/default or whatever minimizes the utility's effect on monitor appearance apart, possibly, from Brightness as discussed in Step 6.

The monitor may exhibit a visible color cast, indicating the color temperature setting isn't accurate. It is very difficult to judge this accurately by eye and there's not much you can do about it anyway in terms of Color Management, unless you use a calibrator and build a profile containing calibration data.

You could, however, try using the video adaptor utility to correct color but for Color Management to understand the correction you will have to let the utility build a profile you can save and then load to use with the monitor.