Sounds like bad ram to me as well. There's no way your box should be using that much ram, unless you have about 2000 programs running in the background, lol.
I would save what you can and get a new RAM card and see what happens. You also should scan for adware/spyware/leechware.
Its probably bad RAM. If you have two 256MB dimms, take one out and see if it still does it. If it doesn't, swap it for the other one and try it again.
Another thing you can do is enter the BIOS setup and set the boot up for full system check and turn on the system log. BIOS may even contain system diagnostics. Depending on the motherboard, it might catch the error.
If you have system or motherboard CDs with it, you could also check to see if there is a diagnostics program there. They are usually DOS programs that will test all your hardware.
...Oh, the freedom of the day that yielded to no rule or time...
this just give me an excuse to upgrade to a gig of ram. think i will go with two sticks instead of one this time. well mabie i will hold off. i do want to upgrade my mother board. the new 64 bit type system. somewhere around 3400+. and pci express. it might take a different type of ram.
I wouldn't get PCI-Express yet.. too expensive. I myself need a new video card but I am waiting until PCI-Express comes out more and drops AGP prices, which then I will get a cheaper AGP card.
Yeah, I'll probably do something similar with the AGP when it goes down again (since PCI express is the shit now, go figure, it used to be AGP was and that PCI was just shit.)
