need help badly!

i have a serious problem!
just a while ago my computer started acting odd...
sometimes it just freezes....when playing, it jumps out of the games frequently....when using iexplore, after a while it starts to act wierd and no commands are working, i check memory usage: 120 MB on iexplore only!!!

sometimes the computer restarts suddenly!

i've got latest norton anti-virus with latest virus list.
i've tried to run programs like ad-aware to get rid of browser hijacks and spy software, etc, etc...

i've not installed any new hardware, and i cant think of anything else it could be caused by!

i've been running windows's scandisk and defrag and norton systemworks's scandisk and defrag...no errors, nothing damaged...no hardware conflicts....

i really dont want to reinstall windows because i just did, and its a paint in the ass to save all stuff and reinstall all software again!

please help with this!

What OS are you running ? How much mem ? What's your GC ?

Heat can cause strange things too.

You didn't say what hardware you are running, but
if you have a graphics card and a CPU that run hot, you
may not have adequate cooling.

May want to look into a case fan, or two.

i've never had this problem before!
i have 768 mb ram, 1.2ghz amd...

are you sure that this can be caused by bad cooling?
i mean for example making iexplore use 120 mb ram!

Try running Filemon (www.sysinternals.com) and see what IExplore loads when you load it.
Do you happen to have an enormous cache or history or something ?

nope. not sure of anything.

Heat can cause strange things to occur, but this
could be attributed to anything squirrley.
I don't think excessive heat would put IE mem useage
up to 120 MB, but that may not even be part of the problem.

how much space do you have on your hard drive?
is that too small?
Can you check the memory? bad stick?


I have severe heat problems with my Dell 240GX (equals piece of crap)
the monitor signal will just quit on me with no warning.
shutdowns and keyboard/mouse inputs not working are common.
I have the case propped open witha CD case and a desk fan
cause work won't spring to repace this POC. works fine now....
until the dust accumulates on something important.

right now IE uses 18 MB.....but after a while when i've used it for a long time, it just starts to act weird and eats my ram!

i have plenty of space left on my HD, and i've cleard my temp files and cookies.