My knowledge of computers is lower novice, I used to do some programming dabbling C++, HTML, Java 2, vb6... for the most part 8 or 9 years ago as a teenager I was a yahooing skript kiddie. That's the extent of my knowledge.
Right now, this Compaq Presario, is not not mine, friend's who wanted to throw it out so I thought I'd fix it up and try to sell it for some buck. No I didn't drop it and he has no idea what the heck happened. It's a fairly unusual problem that I only ran into once back 5 or 6 years ago with a Dell optiplex and I forget how I dealt with it then.
I'll try reinserting the vid card and memory, let you know what happens.