Off topic

If you're running windows 9x/ME then reboot. Also try removing items from your system tray- antivirus software is a notorious memory grabber. In addition, if you have your paging file on the C drive and it's getting crowded, that could be the source of the error. There's a dated but good explanation here
http://www.cyberwalker.net/columns/aug97/082196.html

hope that helps

Eric, can you explain the part about the Paging File? I'm not clear on that one. Thanks.

Paging file

This is often the culprit in systems where the computer "all the sudden started doing X". The paging file is a cache on the hard drive that acts as spare memory when your ram fills up.

Unfortunately for windows 9x/me users, it doesnt matter how much RAM you have on your system, windows will always want to access that cache. To make matters worse, the default location for this cache is the C: drive, the busiest drive on your PC.

If you have more than one hard drive partition putting your paging file on C: is a horrible idea (BTW it is also a horrible idea if your disk has only one partition- but that's another story) because the C: disk, being most written to, will also fragment the most rapidly, and once the paging file fragments, things get weird.

If you have more than one partition, right click on the "my computer" icon, go to "properties", click the "performance" tab, click the "virtual memory" button, and you'll see a "let windows set my virtual memory" or something like that, and the C drive will invariably be selected. Click the button for setting your own virtual memory, select another drive from the drop down list (preferably one with more room on it, and not a lot of applications), and say ok. Do not disable virtual memory. Click through the warning about not letting windows do what it wants to do, and reboot.

If you go back into the virtual memory settings you'll see that it is reset to letting windows decide and has the paging file set to C: again. This is not the case, your paging file has changed, just cancel out of the screen instead of saying OK, and it will leave your settings alone.

If you have only one hard drive partition, then your only option is to defragment more often, especially if the disk is getting full.

And if the disk is getting full don't decide to add more RAM without upgrading/adding a new hard drive. This can cause more harm than good, as the paging file increases in size with increasing RAM, so your fragmentation problem gets worse (each time there's a write event the likelihood is increased that it has to happen on top of paging file reserved space).

Hope I wasn't too off target for your off-target post, LOL