Is there anyway to make the Common3.pac not freeze?

[the98pika]

Hello, I've been having trouble with common3.pac for awhile. It will work fine with like 1-3 item hacks, but will freeze if I add a lot of item hacks. I'm thinking it's the file size since that's kinda the problem with some files.
So how do you shorten the file size of common3.pac or if it isn't the problem then what is it?