problem running programs

[Rick]

I am having a problem I've never had before and it's
kicking my butt like I was a Los Angeles Laker! My
computer has an Athlon 1700 processor with 1.5 GB of ram
so it shouldn't be any problem running multiple programs
right? Well, lately I seem very limited in this regard.
Just a few minutes ago I had Task Manager, Internet
Explorer, Adobe Golive CS, Adobe Photoshop CS , Cute FTP
Pro, and an instance of Windows Explorer open. I then
tried to open Adobe Illustrator CS and the program
wouldn't load. There was a warning dialog that said a few
of the illustrator modules wouldn't load.

Once this happend this happened, my machine was pretty
much useles. The start menu would appear but clicking on
any item did nothing. I tried opening the calculator from
the MS Office Toolbar but the link wouldn't open. All I
had to do to get out of the freeze was to close Adobe
Golive.

I realize that this is a lot of programs to run but my
laptop (2.8 Pentium 512K ram) has no problem running all
of these and more.

I'm thinking this may be a memory (or memory management)
problem or perhaps a corrupted system file?

Anybody out there have any ideas? Your help would be
greatly appreciated!

Sincerely,

Rick

p.s. I grabbed the screen image during the lock-up and
had no problem pasting it into Photoshop. Since the
screen-grab happened during the lock-up, I think the
memory might be okay?

 

[Malke]

I am having a problem I've never had before and it's
kicking my butt like I was a Los Angeles Laker! My
computer has an Athlon 1700 processor with 1.5 GB of ram
so it shouldn't be any problem running multiple programs
right? Well, lately I seem very limited in this regard.
Just a few minutes ago I had Task Manager, Internet
Explorer, Adobe Golive CS, Adobe Photoshop CS , Cute FTP
Pro, and an instance of Windows Explorer open. I then
tried to open Adobe Illustrator CS and the program
wouldn't load. There was a warning dialog that said a few
of the illustrator modules wouldn't load.

Once this happend this happened, my machine was pretty
much useles. The start menu would appear but clicking on
any item did nothing. I tried opening the calculator from
the MS Office Toolbar but the link wouldn't open. All I
had to do to get out of the freeze was to close Adobe
Golive.

I realize that this is a lot of programs to run but my
laptop (2.8 Pentium 512K ram) has no problem running all
of these and more.

I'm thinking this may be a memory (or memory management)
problem or perhaps a corrupted system file?

Anybody out there have any ideas? Your help would be
greatly appreciated!

Sincerely,

Rick

p.s. I grabbed the screen image during the lock-up and
had no problem pasting it into Photoshop. Since the
screen-grab happened during the lock-up, I think the
memory might be okay?

Thanks for the very detailed post. I'd do a couple of things:

Normal troubleshooting: scan with current av using updated definitions
and remove any spyware that may be running. Remove spyware with Spybot
Search & Destroy from www.safer-networking.org and Ad-aware from
www.lavasoftusa.com. Be sure to update these programs before running
them. These programs are free, so run them both since they complement
each other. It is best to run antivirus and spyware removal tools in
Safe Mode. You may also need to run CWShredder from http:/
www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/index.html . Please read the instructions
carefully. Also, make sure you've visited Windows Update and applied
all security patches. Make sure you are running a firewall.

If you've done all that and the machine is still locking up, test your
RAM with something like Memtest86 from www.memtest86.com. Allow the
test to run for a long time (hours) unless you get errors right away.
If you get errors, replace the RAM.

Malke