Game freezes

Every so often, quite frequently, my game freezes for about 30 seconds.
This also happens in the other two games i own, sims 3 and spore.
I've cleaned my PC for dust and I've moved the tower to a more open area. Neither of these things worked and my connection is fine too.
Anyone have any ideas what the problem could be?
Thanks

Graphic lag? What video card are you using and how much memory do you have?

1. I know specifically some anti-virus softwares carry a major application freeze, like Guild Wars, whenever the update.

2. If it was a severe gpu problem, it wouldn't have an intermittent freezing problem, you would notice it constantly. However because this seems to be happening with graphic intensive games like you mentioned, update your graphics drivers to the newest versions to be sure.

3. Regardless of the cleanliness of your hard drive, it could be carrying errors which it has picked up over time.

4. Try a defrag.

5. Check your motherboard. I have heard cases of constant computer freezes when the capacitors are swollen or other worn parts have caused issues.

6. If all else fails, and it continually annoys you, you can wipe your hard drive and reinstall everything. If the freezes are still occurring, you have a hardware problem.

Does the freezing occur when not running graphics intensive program?

I have a NVIDIA GeForce 8200
3mb RAM

And yes the freezing only occurs while on these games
I've also tried a defrag and there is still lag

Does the system freeze any other time when not gaming, like when playing videos or music?

I had a similar issue but my system would freeze occasionally even when not gaming, but more often when playing multimedia files. It took me forever to diagnose but it turned out to be a faulty hard drive with defective firmware.

If you have a Seagate 7200.11 Barracuda series hard drive then that could be the issue. Or like the poster mentioned above, just a general hard drive problem even if it's not that model.

It's only when gaming

Are you playing with maxed out settings? That video card is insufficient to play any of those games at max settings @ typical resolutions anyways.

It does indeed now sound like a graphic problem. With the above suggestions, try lowering your settings. You will notice quite a change. I recently did the same with my 9500.

the 8200 is still quite a low level card and may struggle, my wife plays spore and sims 3 and we needed to go for a 500 + ( pay more attention to to last 3 numbers as the first is only the series number, although obviously the higher the better)

and is your cpu dual core?, these games can can struggle/conflict with dual core chips