Hi Cass Almost certainly sounds like a Virtual drive space issue Though a Defrag May allevviate the Problem Plus a Clean of the Hard drive Using CCLeaner or Easyclean (Toniarts) Ok for the short tern...Long term A bigger capacity hard drive Can be fitted to take the Lions share of the Load (Prices are Coming down all the Time so is a Good investment ,Go for at least a 160 GB SATA drive if you have a newish computer But Post details when asked of what you do know about the Specs of your computer and the Knowledgeble Members here can tell you what you can fit
Post in this section Label it something Like " Hard Drive & Virtual Drive space Updating"
I do Know The Virtual drive Space default is 15% of the Main Drive (C:) Mine is custom set @ 1500MB on My 160M GB drive (nearer 9% )and I've also reduced The System Restore Calendar to 6 week Auto sets To match Main drive size (By Default!) Default is 12% reduce to 4% on a large 150 GB Plus drive..(for 2 months /6 weeks) worth of System Restore Links . (subject to Trial and error)
So before you even start thinking about a Hardware update DO check out these areas and Tweak the Settings They do slow things down sharply if left unchecked! and Cause "Memory problems"(Like yours) in other areas
You can use my comments in your post. Will be a Help/Checklist for whoevers Good at fixing these
PS You won't Lose any data Just Useless Old dead files and Backup files relating to Security settings (They'll renew right away) PPS The M$ security updates do accunulate and cause a Log Jam If CCleaner/Easycleaner is Not used to delete the outdated files
-------------------- History so far.. 9 years surfing & 28 Years Computing (First ZX81 1k)