BleepingComputer.com: Never Winter Nights Diamond

I installed Never Winter Nights Diamond and it installed fine, but after playing it for maybe 10 - 15 minutes it will freeze up. When I open task manager I get that it is not responding and then I end task and restart the game.
It will go for another little while and do the same thing. Even after rebooting the computer it stilll happens, I sometimes even get that it can't see the disk in the drive.

I was wondering if the fact that there is only approx 15 gigs free on a 40 gig hard drive could cause this.

I have winXP SP2 40gig HD 512mb 32mb graphics card (onboard).

I don't run anything else when I play the game to not tie up any resources.

I am getting upset and before I install new HD and another 512mb of RAM and possibly upgrade videocard, I just want to make sure that this will help.

Should I shut down all the programs I have running in background (ie security AV etc) while I play?

This is an awesome game and I'd love to pay for more than 15 minutes at a time.

Any help is appreciated, and I'm probably going to upgrade anyways, but if I can fix it in the meantime that would be great.

Thanks.
Tricky

I would imagine your problem (unless it is overheating, but then the problem would show when you play other games) would reside in the video card, since 512mb of RAM should be enough to handle it (it was released in 2002), and you have plenty of hard drive space open.
You can certainly try disabling any applications or unneeded programs running in the background, and if there are player options that allow you to change from best graphics, etc., to best performance, to adjust these. If you have not done routine computer maintenance (including scanning for malware and defragging), that might make a difference. Lastly, be sure you have the latest drivers for both your video and audio cards.
Regards,
John

This post has been edited by jgweed: 04 March 2006 - 11:44 AM