No Monitor

I recently purchased a ViewSonic 19-in wide screen monitor. The on-board graphics, Compaq Pesario SR1150NX, could not support the 1440x900 resolution, so I purchased an ATI Radeon 9550 graphics card. After I installed everything according to instructions from Compaq and ATI, I set the resolution to 1440x900 and then got an error message that the frequencies in vertical and horizontal were not OK with the monitor. At this point, I must have made a critical error. I may have rebooted per on screen prompt. The monitor is blank after booting and now I can't access Safe Mode to get to Control Panel. The monitor and computer just freeze after I select Safe Mode. I tried numerous options available on the Windows F8 options, but to no avail.

If I select VGA mode, I hear the hard drive booting up. I have this computer home networked to my laptop and am able to access the hard drive, though I may have set up the network so that I can't make certain changes from a remote computer, don't remember.

Is there a way to make the necessary corrections to my desktop using my laptop and the network connection?

Thanks.

Thanks. The old monitor was a 14 year old 15-inch CRT that was getting wearisome on these old eyes. I tried hooking up the old monitor but no go. From what I have read, if you get a frequency or refresh rate put into the control panel, it could be a problem for any monitor. I have read that in the past, this could kill your monitor, but they have put safeguards into the monitor so that the monitor will not be fried. You would think that they would put safeguards into Windows that would keep you from putting bad configurations into the system that would prevent you from booting into a safe mode.