Games lock up but only temporarily

[archcommus]

So I'm troubleshooting my girlfriend's family's computer. What it does is, any 3D games will freeze up very frequently, like every ten seconds, where the image on the screen just stops and the mouse is not responsive. However, after a few moments, sometimes five seconds, sometimes 30, things resume as normal, but walk around that next corner, and bam, it happens again. It's a Dell Dimension 8200 with a Pentium 4 2 GHz, 512 RAM, and a GF4 Ti4600. It has XP Pro SP2, DX9.0c, and nVidia drivers version 77.77 installed. Any ideas on what this could be caused by? Could this be a video card issue?

 

[kitkat22]

Have you tried reducing the game settings?

 

[archcommus]

Yep, all at the lowest. It happens with older games, too, like RTCW.

 

[archcommus]

Video card overheating, perhaps?

 

[chrisrod01]

tried it with one stick of ram and the n the other one. That happen woth my friend comp

 

[d2arcturus]

Spyware perhaps?