Upgrading Sony Vaio. . .

Hi everyone! I'm a noobie to all this tech stuff which is pretty fascinating.

I'd like to create 3D content, Edit/Mix/Create Audio/Video and export it out but can't afford a new system. I want to use my old Sony Vaio (model RX680G) but it wont take the load so i need to upgrade it to its full potential for it to barely serve my purpose. I upgraded the RAM to its max of 1GB but didn't see any difference in speed or performance yet, as a matter of fact the computer is slower now. . . . . . i'm wondering if i did something wrong? I just popped the card in as instructed it, plugged the power cord in and turned it on (i probably didn't pull the External Hard Drive unit out). The RAM is recognized by the system, so i think it should be fine but some of the video files on the External Hard Drive got corrupted, and when i tried to format it i got a message saying Windows can't format it (i wish i didn't have to buy any recovery software, my budget is extremely low), maybe i'm just paranoid but i thought it might be possible that putting the memory card in caused the corruption of some files in the External Hard Drive (this is the only place where i notice file corruption and extreme slow downs so far) but why didn't other videos files got corrupted?
Is it possible the memory card is not working properly even if its recognized by the system? if so how can i find out?

Next i'm looking to upgrade the OS to XP Pro because its a minimum requirement for some 3D software to operate, there are some Windows XP Pro OEM out there (which is what i'm going for) but most of them come bundle with SP2 which the manufacturer doesn't recommend, instead they recommend installing the SP2 after all other updates are installed in the correct order.
If the SP2 comes bundle with the OS can it be uninstall and reinstall when necessary?

The next thing i'm looking to upgrade is the graphics hardware. I don't know what to do in that area, i've done some research and ended up more confused then when i started , my systems has the intel 845 chipset with a pemtium 4 processor 2a GHz, an 4x AGP 3d Graphics Hardware Acceleration (Nvidia TNT2 M64) with 32mb memory ( sdram) and MPEG2 Realtime Encoder/Decoder board with TV Tuner, it has three PCI slots two of which are empty here is a direct link for the specs:

PCV RX680G Specs

what should i do here?

After that i'm thinking to add an audio card to work parallel with the current one.
Can one of the PCI slots be used for this purpose?

Another thing i was wondering is: is it possible to replace the floppy drive with an updated DVD Writer?

all suggestions are greatly appreciated, thanks for taking the time to read this post . . .

If you added ram to it, then it needed to be the same speed as what was currently in it. Example, if it had 512mb of PC2100, then you would need to add (any amount)mb of PC2100. The difference between anything less than a gig, and anything over a gig should be very noticeable… very. It should say on each stick of ram what the speed and the size is. It will work with two different speeds, however the faster one will only run at the speed of the slower one… therefore causing a bottle-neck of sorts. They need to be the same type. the corrupt data issue could be from any of several issues… could be viral ..or it could be that it was unplugged before it was "safe" to unplug it from the system. You say you need to upgrade to XP Pro, what is currently installed..? If your wanting to do anything that is graphic intensive then you will HAVE to have SP2 or higher. Most everything now days uses .NET framework and any video adapter/card that is worth using will require it be installed to even use it. Personally, ATi is my choice of video card and its possible to find an ATi card thats AGP. For what your wanting to do with it, I would suggest the x1600 or x1800… and you can get either or with 512mb of ddr2 onboard. As far as nVidia goes… I think you can still find a 6600 or something in that class that should do what your wanting to do. You wont be able to run a sound card parallel with another one.. atleast not physically. You can do it virtually but thats not feasible. The floppy drive requires a 34-pin cable, hard drives / cd-dvd drives are IDE (integrated drive electronics) devices and are 40 - 80 pin (80-pin being UltraATA) cables so no, you wouldnt be able to replace a floppy with a cd-drive