Pagefile, virtual memory and no restart??

Lately I've been having a problem with my laptop (m1530). When I leave it on for a few hours, browsing the web along with playing not-so-demanding games (warcraft III), eventually il get a message on my system task telling me my virtual memory is low, and when i press ctrl-alt-del and go to performance, the page file usage is up at 6.80 GB, and no matter how many programs i close it wont go down. The only way to fix it is to reboot, which is also giving me problems:

Whenever i go to start > restart or shut down, everything closes as it should, but when the screen is stripped down to only the wallpaper and nothing else, it stops. I cant hear the hardware working, and even if i let it go, the laptop wont restart/turn off. The only way to fix it is to hold the power button till it turns off, and press it again to turn it back on. I dont get any error messages on reboot or anything, but its annoying (and a sign of malfunctioning software i think?).

Incase it helps, i reformated to XP about a week ago when i bought the laptop (32 bit). Anyone got some pointers for me?

 

How much RAM you've got ?
Probably bad memory module. (Ran memtest ?)

 

ive got 3 gb ram, and whats memtest?

 

Windows should have only set your pagefile to be 6GB if you have 3GB of memory. Memory test here ( http://www.memtest86.com/) but I'm not yet entirely convinced that it's a hardware problem... let's see where the memory test takes up before I make any assertions.

 

If not using Vista now, do the memtest.
And whenever you use vista -> Assign a fixed page-file size (Vista's on the fly page-file thing is not good). And monitor task manager, as to what is actually using up all the physical memory....

 

Sounds like a memory leak in one of the programs that you're running. Try running the task manager to see how much virtual memory your applications are taking up and if one application in particular constantly grows.

 

i dont have a floppy drive ..

anyone have any ideas for my reboot/shutdown problem?

 

You can burn a memtest CD....

I agree with the memory leak possibility.

 

what about the reboot problem?

 

Could be related to bad memory or a memory leak. Let's push past that first.

 

hmm k il go out and buy some blank CD's and burn the thing on tomorow

 

hmm i was thinking, would it be possible to boot from a usb flash drive? for the memtest thing

 

Ok hopefully somebody reads this:

I did the memtest, and after 1:42:07 the system gave me a pass.
Therefore i believe that the problem is not with my ram, but rather with a program. Is there any way to test this with a program, instead of just watching the processes in the control panel?

 

I read it but I don't know the answer. Sorry.