I have an IBM thinkpad

Question

I have an IBM thinkpad T20 running windows 2000. The computer is on and booted up but the monitor is not lighting up. It is running on 256mb ram and I was getting a lot of virtual memory is low warnings before the monitor went out. I have ordered more ram. I was wondering if the monitor issue could be related to the lack of ram. Is there any way with the screen dark to decrease the virtual memory until the new ram gets here??