The PC does well in every other task we use it for. I am thinking while playing the Facebook games there is just to much data being sent to the PC to process and not enough RAM to process to information or perhaps the hard drive is being to slow.

The flash version we have installed is the latest recommended install on all browsers.

(Could be getting hot too.)

It has that onboard video stuff Starkers. Perhaps I will search for a better driver later on tonight. As far as memory prices go I think I can get another 512 MB for the machine for around $40 dollars.

Dave - The fans are running fine and have all been blown free of dust.

Starkers this machine does not have an AGP nor PCI-X slot. Just regular old PCI slots. I have turned off all unneeded background services already.

Bugger!!!  There were some PCI video cards available some years back but I'm not sure if you could pick one up for a reasonable price these days, given the demand would be quite low since the advent of PCIE.  I actually have a Nvidia 4800GS that's PCI, but it's not much good to you here in OZ, is it.

Yeah, like Dave suggests, see if you can bump up the video RAM when you add the other stick, that may help some.

Things to check for:

Any increased noise (especially a grinding sound) when you hit the problem area.  It could be failing sectors on a hard drive about to go. 

If the computer has had a lot of wear-and-tear--moved around a lot, sitting by a heat vent, dropped or banged into--you may need to reseat the memory modules and possible remove and reapply thermal paste to the CPU and re-attach the heat sink and fan.

Open the case when its running and look to see if the cooling fans are running, don't have broken blades and check the radiator-type heat sink under the fan over the cpu to see if it's full of dust.  Clean the dust out--while it is powered off and unplugged.

Most likely its the need for more memory and/or the hard drive.  Another possibility is a facebook related trojan/rootkit that's made it into the system.  Do you have a lot of facebook apps allowed for example?

If it has the latest version of Flash but it's running Windows XP, perhaps that's the issue.

What I've found on this so far is more for multi-core CPU's running Windows XP and Flash, and these are more for video issues and Youtube related complaints than Facebook games.

One solution:

"Launch browser (IE for Firefox

Go to Task Manager

Click on the browser process.

Right click and Set Affinity

Un-Check every CPU except for the last one."

But that's for multi core. So let me see what else I can find.

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It looks like on some XP machines McAfee AV detects flash games as malicious attacks or intrusion attempts, and it freezes things (Whether it's just the browser or Windows entirely) when it tries to intervene, often before it can even get a message out.

To verifiy if it's a hard drive issue I'd recommend grabbing SeaTools or another free hard drive tester. Don't run anything that it says may damage your hard drive - you should be able to get a good idea from running the basic tests. But if it's the hard drive it wouldn't freeze up due to a single activity.

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Have you already tried completely uninstalling Flash and the subsequent plugins and reinstalling fresh to clear out possible upgrade leftover files? And have you checked your events logs to verify that there's not any errors occurring that Windows may be keeping track of for you?

One person had a similar issue on a Dell machine and rebooted to VGA mode through the F8 startup menu - They say that it fixed everything, proving that it was a video issue. Unfortunately, if it's onboard video, once it starts to go, it may be a sign of things to come as far as your motherboard is concerned. So while a PCI video card would fix things temporarily, if you see bulging capacitors when you pop the case, it's time for a replacement.

But the most common solution seems to be completely uninstalling and reinstalling Flash and its constituents.

http://get.adobe.com/shockwave/otherversions/

You don't have to pay for Norton Ghost. Checkout Clonezilla.

http://clonezilla.org/

Also, if it's still an HP factory model, you can get the hardware drivers from their support and downloads section. I have a netbook that I obtained for coding out of the office, and I just put all the drivers from HP's website onto a DVD so I have them safe.

There's also Driverguide and other places where you can download a driver after viewing a series of advertisements. I've done that too.

Even if it's not strictly factory, you can download the drivers individually so it's not like you have to install drivers for after-factory parts. I suggest ripping them now and putting them on a cd/dvd if you think the hard drive or anything is failing. It'll be easier than having to hunt them down later after something critical fails.