Possible OnBoard Video Problem??

My wife and I both have Dell computers.
Hers has a much faster processer, and has a lot more ram than mine.
However, when she is playing a board game on yahoo (like scrabble, etc.), and has her yahoo messenger open - and more than one person sends her a message - her computer locks up.
Her computer has onboard video.
If she uses my computer, which has a seperate video card - she has no problem at all.
Could there be some sort of conflict between Yahoo and her onboard video?

 

Hey barnburner,
Define "a lot more RAM".
With onboard video, her computer needs to use more RAM than your computer does because a separate video card has it's own memory and doesn't use RAM to any great extent. She may be maxing RAM usage out and causing a lock up.

 

She has 526mb of ram in her computer vs 384 in mine.

 

If your wife's computer is running WinXP, I could see her possibly having a problem with not enough RAM. XP really needs 512 MB to run decently. I'd invest in a video card for her computer unless you have some other indicators of problems. That would free up some RAM usage for other applications.

 

ummm i really dont think you'd need a video card to run browser games, or scrabble. 526 is fine for anything related to non-modern gaming and i doubt that its video related. Not sure what the problem is tho....

 

You could be right viper but with no other indicators, I'm at a loss myself.
I was thinking with all the other stuff Dell bundles on computers these days, there's some much running in the background that RAM gets maxed out.

 

Yeah - That's the first thing I do with any computer I get - go thru and uninstall all the junk and clean up msconfig to get down to the bare bones.
She has nothing but the essentials running in the background.
It's really strange. I've never had a computer with onboard video before, so I'm in new territory here. I was going to take my video card out and put in her computer, but it doesnt have an agp slot - so I may have to pick up a cheap pci card and see what difference that makes.
Thanks guys!

 

give some system specs. for both the machines ..

PS. I also have a onboard graphic of intel which is great ..
between 1-8MB Of RAM in normal windows'ing up to 224MB while its needed ..
U can config. that in the bios ..