I had alot of problems with this SS when I first downloaded it to.
What I had to do is the 16 bit resaolution and the only other way I could get it to work is to set my screen display at 800x600.
I myself run a 900MHZ with 548Megs ram and the old 12 meg voodoo2 card. To me it sounds like you need a better graphics card cause 2megs of memory is pretty bad for todays required applications.
However there is a program you can try called "End It All!" what this will do is shutdown everything that runs in your computers background even if you don't see it running. I think you can get it at
www.download.com or just do a search for it on yahoo. But I really think you just need a better vidieo card asuming I read your post right