Just a little tip

[Vvlad]

I was getting a bit frustrated with my PC crashing every time I played Oolite, it's the only game on my PC the rest of the time it's just used for interweb and paperwork. I tried uninstalling things and re installing but it kept crashing. Finally I took the lid of the PC and discovered the processor heat sink was chock full of dust and fluff. 2 minutes with the hoover and no more crashes.

[Capt. Murphy]

And a very good tip at that. All of my laptop's vents get hoovered on the (admittedly rare ) occasions I get the hoover out for the rest of the house.

[SandJ]

Do be very careful if you use a vacuum for this purpose. If it sucks up any jumpers you'll never know they have gone, let alone what the settings were. Also, they can be a great source of static. And any dry or weak joints in the circuitry may be permanently damaged. Actually, don't use a domestic vacuum cleaner at all for this purpose.

Compressed air cans ('spray dusters') are the best tool for the job.

Top Tip Number 2: Never use a spray duster on a dusty PC indoors. (Not unless you intended cleaning the room anyway.)

Top Tip Number 3: The specialist, tiny, battery operated vacuum cleaners designed for cleaning components couldn't suck a speck of dust off a gnat's quaver.

Top Tip Number 4: If you removed the heatsink to vacuum it, you'll need to replace the thermal grease that connected it with the processor.

[Vvlad]

But then again it's still not working properly

Just wondering if I'm expecting too much of it, I'm running an Athlon XP3200+ with 2 gigs of ram.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

Top Tip Number 4: If you removed the heatsink to vacuum it, you'll need to replace the thermal grease that connected it with the processor.

Better still, if at all possible don't remove the heatsink. Pull the fan instead. Of course blow the crud out of the heatsink while the fan is off it, but also check the fan for accumulated crud; it will likely have a mess built up on the blades. Check the case fans as well.
Also, remember that the fan is an electromechanical device with small moving parts, and it spins at a high RPM. It's not going to last forever. Eventually it would've spun it's last rotation and freeze up, and that can cause overheating issues too. Fortunately a heat sink fan is fairly cheap to replace.