Thanks BRE901, Keef and Richard ...Don't think lack of free disk space is the problem - 13.2Gb free on a 40Gb IDE drive ... Drive has been regularly de-fragged (approx every 7 - 10 days until about three weeks ago) ... Screen Saver and Norton AV both set "Off" and Power Management set to "Always On" ... DISKCLEAN run before attempting defrag as well as SCANDISK ... All running tasks terminated except Explorer and Systray using Ctrl-Alt-Del Have also run MSCONFIG and killed everything that doesn't seem to be necessary in the Start Up Group (although I didn't stop anything in System.ini or Win.ini) ... Doesn't seem to make any difference whether the computer is running full Windows or is started in Safe Mode - it cranks through "Checking Disk Info" until it gets to about 10% and then comes up with an "insufficient memory" message (DEFRAG009 I think) ... Even switched on POST memory check which shows memory OK; And Norton AV updated as of 10 December 03 ...
I am baffled! So --- Any other suggestions? Like can anyone suggest a utility for seeing what processes are using how much memory?
Rather think that a full re-install is going to be the answer (Groan!) -- but this is a production system (like it puts milk in Feline's saucer!) and this is a busy time of the year for me: although I can default to an older backup system, that's not a particularly exciting or viable alternative (very much slower with considerably less disk space).