Video card and motherboard question

[wonderings]

Hi all, its been a while since I have posted here. No more Windows computers at work yah! anyway ... I was given a computer minus a hard drive from someone for helping them set up there new iMac. Anyways, I want to know what I can upgrade. I know its an AMD chip at 1.5 ghz. It has 256 mb of ram. I have installed XP Pro SP2 on it. Not sure about the video card or mother board. Its a few years old, so probably only a 64 mb video card. I would like to, if possible, install Vista on this machine to mess around. Is it doable with the processor speed? I would add least another 512 ram. How do I know what video cards will work with my machine? Any help would be appreciated.

thanks

[pat]

You may find an answer here.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/evaluate/hardware/entpguid.mspx

[wonderings]

thanks for the link pat, and idea on figuring out what motherboard and video card I have? I really cant tell by looking at it.

[pat]

If you have an operating system installed you can install PC Wizard.
http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.php

This should identify your hardware for you.

If you?re just looking at the parts, this site may help. Try the guided tour.
http://www.idhw.com/

You can also try running the serial number through a search engine, like google.