OK, so you have WinXP on (I guess) a newer machine with 1Ghz processor (or better). MTW crashes randomly, taking XP with it. Without more hardware/software details...I'll take a stab at it:

First: download MTW patch v1.1 from here
http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/MTW/Patches.shtml
to clean up some compatibility issues with XP.

Second: here is a laundry-list of generic problems guys have had, and the fixes, courtesy of senior member Kraellin:
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what o/s are you using?

also, try setting your agp aperture to 64.

you've got two hogs fighting for the same trough. i'm assuming with an ntfs system that you're either running win2k or winxp, both are hogs and so is this game. so, it's no real surprise that changing the priority of the game would affect its performance. windows does not just go to sleep when you run the game. and despite turning off tasks there are still processes that windows runs while running any other program. think of it as two screaming kids both fighting for the various chip's attention. frankly, i sometimes think we were better off when it was all DOS games

you might also check the other bios settings while yer in there changing the agp and see if anything can be done to improve resource allocations.

you can also turn off anti-aliasing. this has helped some folks with the FPS.

turn off smoke and fauna in the game options, if it's not already.

check the microsoft update site for tweaks that might help.

your system looks like it shld handle just about anything the game can throw at it, though. i do know that a lot of folks with the geforce4 cards have complained about slowdowns. might be something going on there also. not sure.

check windows safe mode for duplicate device entries in device manager.

check windows safe mode for multiple driver entries.

check windows safe mode for device faults.

run a full diagnostic with something like sandra 2000.

run all the tests with dxdiag.

check your startup config for unnecessary startup programs. windows and other programs like to sneak things in there that are totally unwanted.

check your system info for forced devices and irq and dma conflicts. also note if one or more irq's are 'overcrowded' with a lot of devices all using the same irq, especially the sound card and vid card both on the same irq.

disable the screen saver.

disable or tweak the ACPI stuff, but be a bit careful on that one. you can get some weird shutdown stuff going on there with that one.

under 'system information\components' look under 'problem devices' to see if anything is listed.

you've got a more than adequate system there. mtw shld run fine. if it's not, and you're getting major slows, then something else is eating is hogging the resources, either windows, a memory leak, a bad device, slow drivers, or something. check everything and lemme know if you find anything.
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