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classicRock

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Windows Out of Memory

My windows 2000 machine has been popping up with this message when I try to run processes about 2-3 minutes after starting up.  Before this time elapses, it works just fine.  After the 3 mintues are up, i can no longer start many programs, copy/paste files/text/pictures, even bring up a search dialog box in IE.  Interestingly enough though, if I start say windows media player just when the computer starts up, I will be able to run and play ANY video/audio file without warning.  However, close media player and start up again and I get an "out of memory" error message.

Now, I have 768 mg of ram, not to mention 110GBs of free space (so i'm not running out of virtual memory).  When I check the task manager it claims that I am not using more than 70~100 mb of memory (and this is before I shut down any non critical processes).  I've played around with the BIOS settings to no avail.

I've reformated my entire machine twice and I still get this message.  Incidently, it has also been appearing on other computer in my network (also 2k machines).  I'm thinking virus, but I haven't found anything to substantiate this (or anything on the web that might help).  I've run a full virus scan with the latest updates from pc-cillin I came up empty.

Any ideas?
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CrazyOne
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Hmmm maybe some bad RAM

Test the RAM

If you can swap out the RAM with known good modules for testing first if you can't do that then test the machine with one RAM module at a time until you tested every module. Other wise run the the following RAM testers.
--------------------------------------------

NOTE IF THIS DOESN'T FIND ANYTHING WRONG WITH THE RAM THIS DOESN'T MEAN THE RAM IS GOOD you would need to swap out the RAM with known good modules for testing. However if it does find something wrong then chances are the RAM is bad.

DocMemory PC RAM
Diagnostic Software
http://www.simmtester.com/PAGE/products/doc/docinfo.asp

or

http://www.memtest86.com/ 

or

GoldMemory
http://www.goldmemory.cz/
Sounds to me like you have  aprocess that has a memory leak. What apps run at start-up (including things like anti-virus and system tray apps)?
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classicRock

ASKER

All I run at startup is the basic windows tasks and the ATI suite that comes with my radeon 7500 driver.  I've had this machine for about a year and a half and I've only started having this problem for the last 1-2 months.  2 other computers on my network of 4 (the other computer is a linux box) have the same problem.   The ram passed the software test, and I'll try putting it in a friend's machine this afternoon.  I'm pretty sure the RAM is good though.
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darth_wannabe
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Viral infection.  Now i just need to clean the systems up.  Thanks all