lock up or pause?

Several times a day my XP applications just locks up. That is, it suddenly does NOTHING. If I leave it alone, it comes back after several seconds or a minute which seems like hours.
Any ideas of what caused this to suddenly happen? Any ideas on how to fix it?

 

A number of possiblilities.

Easiest one to fix (and a likely canidate) is a pagefile that is too small so that swapping data from physical memory to disk-based virtual memory happens too often.

First though - can you describe your system a little.
- XP-pro or XP-home?
- How much physical memory? (CTRL-ALT-DEL~Task Manager~performance))
- How large is the page file (same screen and guestimate from the amount shown in PF Usage).

 

First though - can you describe your system a little.
- XP-pro or XP-home?

Home
- How much physical memory? (CTRL-ALT-DEL~Task Manager~performance))

Total 523760
available 282180

- How large is the page file (same screen and guestimate from the amount shown in PF Usage). PF usage is shown as 201 MB