Using XP my computer crashes on large files, mostly on Quora. How can I modify my computer to reduce this risk?

Given the information you have shared in the other response (some 550MB or so in use, 3GB available) - you're not doing anything to push the computer itself.  The problem is in the software. Even 1GB of physical RAM is plenty - it won't be a fast computer, but it won't have any problems browsing a web site like this. You said it crashes when loading Quora or large files - I'm not exactly sure what you mean there, but your topic list also includes IE6 (!?!?) - are you using IE6? If Chrome is doing it too, though, there could be something else amiss.  Something, somewhere is messed up, and it doesn't really have to do with your hardware being adequate or inadequate.  If it was just on Chrome, I'd guess that uninstalling extensions could help... but that does not seem to be the case.  Maybe try uninstalling/reinstalling java? If you keep a task manager window open to the processes list, sorted by CPU usage, what are the processes that are using the most CPU when your computer freezes? Another possibility, if the computer is just becoming unresponsive at times, is that the hard disk is in poor condition.  I've found that older machines with dying hard drives can sometimes cause a computer to become quite unresponsive.  Does it make any odd sounds? Another thing to check out may be to try and boot the computer without any extraneous applications running.  Some simple software that looks at what is being loaded is Soluto - it works pretty well and is easy to use, it lets you disable or delay anything that loads on boot with a simple interface that explains how much time everything takes to load, too. I haven't used XP in years in any significant capacity (Win7 is it... and 8), but if it's the same installation of XP that has been on the machine for 5+ years, it wouldn't amaze me if simply reinstalling Windows would resolve the issue.  It is probably an issue that can be figured out without resorting to a reinstall though.