System locks up after short recording

I'm new to computers, so if my problem should be obvious please excuse my ignorance. My problem is that after a minute or more of recording with Audacity my computer completely freezes up. I'm using an HP 8490 with a Pentium 2 and 256 MB Ram on windows 98. Is this insufficient to run the program? Is there anything I can do or another download available that will run more smoothly? Any help would be appreciated.