Computer keeps Freezing whenever I launch a big program...

It does match this thread rather well.



You may need to, however, I'd not go all out and get a fancy shcmancy one at this point. You still need to verify that replacing the keyboard solves your problem.



Not necessarily. I'd said you should take a look at it & see if you need it (you'll wanna check that it's not too thick, mostly worn away, or missing altogether)...

You could potentially make the problem worse if you don't apply the thermal paste properly. And your heatsink may have a thermal pad attached to the bottom of it in which case you might not need any.

If your CPU features a heat spreader (both the Pentium 4 & Athlon 64 do), which is a piece of metal on top of the CPU die (not the heatsink which is separate from the CPU), you'll generally need just a bb-sized dollop of paste in the center of the heat spreader, then the heatsink goes on top, then the fan.



There should be 3 components, the CPU, heatsink & fan.

I just took a peak at it and the processor appears to be about 3" X 3" with a 3X3X1.25 louvered heatsink, behind a 3x3 fan… with louvers folded accordion style perhaps .1" apart.


I just noticed something that strikes me as strange in the System Information:
Total Physical Memory- 256 MB
Available Physical Memory 49.50 MB
Total Virtual Memory 1.98 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.58 GB

Why is the "Available Physical Memory" so low? Is that odd?

Btw, it says this about processor, just in case it helps:
System Manufacturer- VIA Technologies, Inc.
System Model P4X266-8233
System Type- x86-bsed PC
Processor- X86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 4 GenuineIntel ~2200 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date- Award Software International, Inc. 6.00 PG, 10/12/2001

Because your OS & other running processes use it.


No.

Besides, 256 Megs is not a heck of a lot to start with. Idealy, it's the minimum you should have in a system running Windows XP.

If you want to free up some RAM, though, I recommend the freeware FreeRAM XP Pro.

Interesting program. now there is 157 MB available, and I believe I can tell. Perhaps, if the dope fix works and this thing gets to running normal again, I'll put some more Ram in here. I'm sure it's real cheap by now.