On the subject of RAM, I'm debating whether to try upgrading past 2GB or not. According to NewEgg, when I bought this computer, my motherboard only supports up to 2x 1GB. I was looking at the manual for said motherboard earlier though, and that claims it supports up to 2x 8GB. I'm running the 32-bit version of Vista on a 32-bit processor here so there's little reason to go beyond 4GB now, but it's something to consider in the future rather than building a new PC (which was my plan once I had the money and the need for something more powerful). My question is, should NewEgg happen to be right and the manual wrong about this, will there be any ill effects to the board or the RAM itself? I want to be able to return RAM if it doesn't work.
Once you hit 4GB with a non-64-bit OS, you hit the wall, and "lose some of it"... that assumes you don't mind (I don't at the moment).
I would suggest you check your mobo's website and/or mobo's manual (usually downloadable) and/or a memory vendor's website. They generally list the fastest speed and sizes your mobo can support.
AFAIK, having bigger sticks of RAM for systems that don't/can't use it will "only read" a smaller size and the lesser chance of things blowing up in your face.
I'm retarded, so I couldn't figure out what text I needed to reproduce. So, here's an image.
Are you using onboard video? The RAM you have seems rather low anyways. You should really really get more RAM (I'd say you're system should be able to run 1GB or 2GB at most.
Edit: Never mind, only 8MB seems to be lost on that.
I used to run Win2k on 512MB and later on 1GB... seeing you run on 256MB on XP makes me cringe.