Computer freezes when playing game

[Fynall]

I'm playing a pretty old game (10 years or so) with these system requirements:

Microsoft® Windows® 95/98/Me/XP/NT 4.0 with service pack 5
Multimedia PC with a Pentium 166 or higher processor
32 MB of Ram for Windows 95, 98, ME, 64 MB for Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000
Super VGA with 2 MB of video memory

My computer:

Processor: Interl(R) Core(TM) 2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13 GHz
Installed Memory (RAM): 2.00 GB
System type: 32-bit
Graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE
Approx. Total memory: 825 MB

Issue: Game is starting to freeze pretty often, I didn't change anything to my computer recenetly. About 50% of the time or more it freezes when the game first opens, the rest of the time it just randomly freezes during game play. I have no clue as to what is causing this, so far the computer has never frozen when doing something other then playing the game. Don't know if this helps but I'm running on windows 7. Any kind of help would be appreciated

Edit: the game is Age of empires 2: The conquerors

 

[Alive.777]

I have Age Of Empires 2 and tryed to run it on my Windows 7 Core i7 HD5770 rig and it did not even start up. Age of the empires 2 does not support windows 7 and has major issues trying to run on windows 7. The game is just to old. Try Age Of Empires 3 if you still like the series.

 

[Fynall]

Been playing this game for 10 years, I tried aoe 3 but it's way worse in terms of game play fun. It worked fine for 3-4 months on windows 7, only now the comp started freezing, I don't think that's the issue...

 

[Slaymate]

Clean out all the dust bunnies with a can or two of compressed air. It sounds like the video card is getting hot, if the card has a fan make sure it's working properly. It would probably be a good idea to remove, clean and apply new thermal paste to all of the heatsinks in your PC.

Newegg.com - Tuniq TX-2 Cooling Thermal Compound

 

[Fynall]

I'm not an expert with comps, even though I could probably find/buy the two items you mentioned (can of compressed air/thermal paste) at canadian tire, zellers or some other shop, I'm not confident I can apply them correctly, can you show me where to apply them exactly (what it looks like). I'm not fluent in english either so I guess that doesn't help too, sorry for the trouble.