Here is the problem I've having now.  I've uninstalled the game again, reinstalled and I have the same result even after shutting down Windows Defender, AVG and ZAP.  The ports for the game server are open via Windows Firewall and the game still freezes.  It takes about 10 minutes for my system to recover even after setting the preferences of the game to the lowest possible settings.  I'm using old RAM, as in SDRAM, not DDR.  I can upgrade to x2 512 chips but as it stands they're nearly $80 each.

The minimum requirements on RAM to run Windows isn't 512, it's 128.  That shows when you go to your system window (Windows automatically reserves the required amount of RAM to run and shows you what's left).  The max allowable for my motherboard is x2 512 chips, so I'll likely get them one at a time and see if this helps.

Thanks for the comments and help.

P.S. - I'm a she, lol.  I get called a 'he' on almost every forum I use...

AMD Athlon 1.3 Ghz processor, 512 Mb RAM, 40G Main HD, Backup 80G HD, 256Mb NVidia GeoForce Video Card, Microsoft Windows XP Pro.  Have ZAP, AVG Free and Windows Defender running in background.

Did I miss anything?  Thanks for the help.