I don't think low RAM will typically freeze a (well-designed) game completely.  It usually will 1) Tell you when the game starts or tries to install that you don't have enough RAM on your system or 2) Run very slow, but not lock up.

it's vista.

Correct, since when it runs out of RAM it pages to disk.

Minimum requirements for Civ 3:

Pentium II, 300Mhz
32 MB RAM
400 MB free HD space
4X CD-ROM
DirectX 8.0a or better
Video card: capable of 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color
Sound card: DirectX 8.0a compatible

Minimum requirements for Spore:

• 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
• 768 MB RAM
• A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
• At least 4 GB of hard drive space, with at least 1 GB additional space for creations.

--

If the RAM was the issue on Civ 3, it couldn't even reach the title screen on Spore.

The highest bar there (such that there is) is the graphics card. Spore is asking for a discrete card with seperate video RAM, which I doubt you have. Could you tell us what card/chipset you have? Some of the early AMD boards use VIA graphics which are possibly worse than Intel.

EDIT: Another possibility is that the chipset/card you are using doesn't even have working Vista drivers due to its age.

I have similar issues and I've come to a pretty decent conclusion.

nVidia 7000M
1GB Ram
Vista 32bit
AMD 1.9Ghz Dual Core Processor


My laptop IS shite

have u tried running some starcraft?

Reinstall Windows.

thanks folks i know what to do now