As for reinstalling, yeah, I'm at least starting to come to terms with that reality, although it might take a few more crashes to really force me to act.
After 3 years without updates and various problems now, my vote is to reinstall before more crashes/problems cause further grief and waste more time/energy. I think you're putting off the inevitable.
A full reinstall (assisted in a new thread) would likely be finished in about 30 minutes or less... not including the time to walk you through it, if needed, and the time to backup any data you want to keep. A full reinstall would be much faster if you would also be willing to erase your Windows and use Linux on the entire hard drive... because you would not have to be so carefully guided to preserve Windows. Previous posts indicate the computer is getting pretty old, and I'd suspect that you upgraded it to Windows 10, and it probably doesn't run very well either.
This post indicates you need to use swap space because you only have 2GB of RAM. Running out of RAM and swap space may be the cause of the freezes. You do have a 64-bit CPU, so a 64-bit Linux would be preferred, but I think Linux Mint is not a very good choice unless you upgrade RAM to at least 4GB (which is what Linux Mint themselves
say here.) If you can't (or won't) upgrade the RAM, I'd recommend trying several distros that are lighter than Mint, such as Lubuntu, Zorin Lite, Linux Lite, antiX (and others)... though some of these may also be sluggish with only 2GB. A new thread would also be good if you need further help/advice on upgrading your RAM.
If it's within your means, this might be a good time to consider upgrading to a whole new computer too. If you want or need Windows, you could get Win 10 or Win 11 with more horsepower to run better. And your older computer could be dedicated to Linux only... it should really run pretty well if you upgrade to 4GB. With the holidays coming, there are a lot of decent deals... I just ordered one myself, my first since 2009. But not all new computers will run Linux well... so dual-booting a new system may not be as good of an idea as you might think. And Windows (updates) is getting worse about taking over the bootloader and preventing Linux from starting when dual-booting. The challenges never end.