Must restart frequently

[Mike Meier]

Whatever is going on with my system has become very
irritating.

After starting up, logging on, and using the system for
anywhere from a few minutes to many hours, the system
seems to run out of resources. I can't open new windows
in Explorer, or sometimes part of the window opens but the
menu across the top does not show up. Instead, the
Windows icon that is normally on the right becomes as wide
as the form. Or, Windows may ignore my attempts to start
up an application. Or, Explorer becomes very slow,
pausing for up to a minute or more before opening a folder
I double-clicked. Finally, I am having intermittant
problems copying files from one drive to another. I get a
series of messages saying that errors occurred, but the
last error message says the path was too deep. When this
last problem occurs it can be difficult to even restart
Windows and sometimes I have to press the reset button.

I can't seem to link these problems with any application.
I can occur when simply copying files.

I've run Norton Disk and System Doctors, have all of the
latest Windows, Norton and Office updates. Task Manager
says I have plenty of memory available. (I have 384 MB of
physical memory installed.) Virus scans are up to date
and my system is behind a firewall.

Any idea of what is going on?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

You have a misbehaving application. Launch the Task
Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc), then make a note of the
amount of memory used by each application. The one
that keeps asking for ever increasing amounts is the
culprit. Get rid of it!