On Wed, 19 Jan 2011 20:28:10 -0800 (PST), Higgs Boson
wrote:

6. What's the connection between HD RAM and Virtual Memory? I tried
to read the WikiPedia article on Virtual Memory, but too technical for
moi.
It's VIRTUAL MEMORY that the "flame-like" pie charts in the lower
r.h. corner of the screen have been threatening me with. What do I
have to do to get more Virtual Memory? Is it a function of
available HD RAM?


This is snipped from MS, regarding XP and virtual memory*. If you
actually had a second internal drive you can swap the pagefile to
another drive. ( from C:\ to drive letter:\ Your OS has help and
support you can also search.

*show tocWindows XP Professional Product Documentation Performance
and maintenance

To change the size of the virtual memory paging file

You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the
Administrators group in order to complete this procedure. If your
computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may also
prevent you from completing this procedure.

1. Open System in Control Panel.

2. On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.

3. On the Advanced tab, under Virtual memory, click Change.

4. Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the
paging file you want to change.

5. Under Paging file size for selected drive, click Custom size, and
type a new paging file size in megabytes in the Initial size (MB) or
Maximum size (MB) box, and then click Set.

If you decrease the size of either the initial or maximum page file
settings, you must restart your computer to see the effects of those
changes. Increases typically do not require a restart.


Note

• To open System, click Start, click Control Panel, click Performance
and Maintenance, and then click System.

• To have Windows choose the best paging file size, click System
managed size.

• For best performance, do not set the initial size to less than the
minimum recommended size under Total paging file size for all drives.
The recommended size is equivalent to 1.5 times the amount of RAM on
your system. Usually, you should leave the paging file at its
recommended size, although you might increase its size if you
routinely use programs that require a lot of memory.

• To delete a paging file, set both initial size and maximum size to
zero, or click No paging file. Microsoft strongly recommends that you
do not disable or delete the paging file.