Installing Windows 7 sounds tempting

[the_randomizer]

Alrighty then, where do I begin?

To start off, let me just say that I hate computers sometimes, especially when things go wrong and you have no idea how, much less when things started going down the toilet. So here's the lowdown, we currently have two PCs, one is about three years old and the other is nearly six (a hand-me-down from my older brother a couple of years ago, since he didn't need it).

The fact that the older on still runs is a miracle, or so I thought until this morning before I left for school. Here's what happened, the PC went through the POST and boot processes without a hitch, as it normally does. BUT, when Windows was done booting up, I noticed something very, very wrong. The resolution was locked at 640x480 with 2bpp color resolution.

At first I was like WTF? Then I thought to myself, "Oh, I've seen this happen before, all I need to do is change the resolution." Nope, it was locked, and even after applying it to its native 1600x900, it would not change from the lower one. The 2bpp/monochrome wouldn't reset, either. From there, I got new drivers for the GPU (in this case, an old nVidia 9400GT), but when I installed that, it told me the driver failed to install and it was still at the jacked up resolution. The funny thing is, my older brother (who quite the PC/hardware expert, he's has his qualifications, MSDN license, etc) installed Windows updates yesterday, before I shut it down for the night.

I firmly believe that there is two possibilities, either A, the GPU drivers got corrupted after he installed the updates or B, the GPU is failing at an alarming rate and needs to replaced immediately.

I can't remember ALL the specs on this machine, so here it goes:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 BE2400 2.3GHz (probably the "newest" thing on here)
RAM: 2GB DDR2 SDRAM
OS: Windows XP Home 32-bit
GPU: nVidia GeForce 9400GT 512MB

I'm tempted to put Windows 7 on this thing. What should I do?

__________________
CPU - 3rd Gen Core i5 3570 3.4 GHz (3.8 GHz Turbo Boost)
Extensions - MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, EIST,
AVX, Hyper Threading, Intel VT-x, AES-NI, Turbo Boost 2.0, TXT, Smart Cache
GPU - MSI GeForce GTX 660 2 GB GDDR5
RAM - 8192MB DDR3 SDRAM 1333
OS - Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
HDD - Western Digital 1 TB

"If you call up your local hardware store and ask them how you can put tractor tires onto a 1990 Honda, well there's gonna be some laughter, a visit from the cops, maybe a psychiatric nurse." - Red Green