I have tried ubuntu,xubuntu,bodhi,lubuntu,LXLE,pclinuxos, and probably a few others with the same results - works great the first day and then the lockups begin and get worse until I give up and try something else. Booting in recovery and running the utilities don't help. I assume its a video card issue.

And as far as the hardware - Win XP runs flawlessly day in and day out.

HP Pavillion tower A264W
AMD Athlon XP 2800 processor
512 Ram
damaged onboard nvidia graphics
ATI Radeon 8500 AGP card

I love the linux and it seems to run faster than the XP. I don't have any linux installed right now, but would love to get it going again if anyone has any ideas.