installed vista on old hp now monitor is frozen

I have an old hp desktop that continuously gets infected and freezes up. I have to reboot it to factory settings which wipes out my windows xp. I decided to try and download vista (disk from a dell laptop). It downloaded, however, I now get a floating message..."pc video resolution setting out of range change setting ti recommended resolution 1280x1024@60hz."

I have tried f10 system recovery but i do not know what to do from there. Please help!!!!!!

 

Some more detail board,mem, everything

 

ok this may be lengthy...

I have a 4-5 year old hp pavilion a556x. It is ALWAYS getting infected and I have had to (on several occasions) restore it to factory settings which wipes out microsoft word and all my other programs. This most recent time of infection i purchased norton antivirus and it could not be used until microsoft was updated. I tried to update and it would not because word was not installed and the computer woud not accept my product key anymore. I decided then to try and install vista. My husband has a brand new dell laptop and the software for vista came with it. i downloaded the software and everything went fine. until that floating message happened. It will not let me onto my desktop or anything for that matter. I tried to reboot the computer while pressing f10 (recovery). I enter that mode and i get edit boot options

edit boot options for: microsoft windows vista
path: \windows\system32\winload.exe

partition: 2
hard disk:f806f806

[ /noexecute=optin

I submit that and the floating warning comes back with a black background:

PC video resolution setting is out of range. change setting to recommended resolution 1280x1024@60hz. red green blue


If i press f1 (setup) during reboot I get a bios setup utility that i do not know what to do with.

If I reboot into safe mode (f8) i get an error message "windows cannot complete installation in safe mode. to continue installing windows restart the computer."

i hope that is enough info...thanx for the prompt response