Well, I got my ram in, for some reason it wasn't compatible with the 512mb stick I had in, but I've still got 2x1gb on dual channels... and so far it seems to have resolved my problems. I'm really surprised, my computer that I thought was helpless seems to be operating fine now.
I noticed right away that my boot up went from using 374mb of ram to using closer to 600mb so that must mean all of that diffference was running off of virtual memory just from booting up (kinda ridiculous vista requires that much memory), so that was obviously slowing things down.

Anyways, I can't say for sure but it seems to have resolved my problem. Where I used to not be able to download a file and listen to music I can now watch a video while using several other applications, the response time is much faster and my video card hasn't crashed once.

YAY!

That sounds as if it's fixed to me. I'm marking this thread as resolved for now; if you have any further problems relating to this thread, feel free just to post again.