Hello all! I´m a windows xp user (but not for much time...) and I usually see how my computer stop of responding me. The process is this: Firsly it became totally stopped or very slow for certain periods of 5 minutes. How could I do? After that it gets stopped (Even not totally because If I click on the bar I see a blinking response in the bar botton of the program I click on. It´s could be anything related with security (like the firewall or some virus)?

Computer university: I usually experience this, using Matlab (R2007a) with System Generator (its respective compatible version)

My personal laptop: It´s usually works well but when stopped periods became to appears I know in not much time it will became totally stopped. I usually see how Word 2007 get stopped and after a while my windows xp gets stopped. (well I can access to the the manage task pressing ctr+alt and...). The only solution I see is to kill program by program...

My petition: Please, I need good references that help me how to think in order to avoid or to manage the problems previously described. Does anyone know usefull books or articles?

EDIT:

Laptop: OS: XP Home Edition Version 2002 SP3

Hardware: HP Mini Intel(R)Atom(TM) CPU N270 @1,60GHz 1.99 GB RAM

University Computer: OS: XP Profesional SP3

Hardware: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1800+ 1.54 GHz, 768 MB RAM