replacing memory card defaults

I had the use of one of these for business a few years ago, and though a little old and heavy, I liked it. It should still have some life in it for basic email and web browsing.

However, it's not very clear from your description what the problem is and what is preventing you from resetting it. If there's a BIOS password preventing it from booting up at all (no Windows logo appears) then resetting it may mean partial disassembly and doing something inside. The memory card under a cover on the bottom is the RAM and replacing that won't have any effect.

Your best bet with a machine of this age would be to reload it with Linux Mint since Windows XP is long out of support and it may not be capable of running a current version. How to do that is beyond the scope of a brief answer but for a start you could look at rstrt.org/wiki and under Computer Hardware and Computer Software, check out the articles entitled Linux Migration and SSD Migration.