I've installed both patches, have 96 mb of RAM and no mods. I've tried shutting down the game and restarting my computer but the problem is still there.
I had that happen to me before too, usually I let it run til it freezes, then select exit game, and come back in and hit resume, it usually works then...
If its just freezing up then try reinstalling the game entirely, I would say something got corrupted.