Thanks for all the help! I think I'm going to be OK now...SOTOMac's advice will undo the memory tweak I did (I could not remember how I did that). My setting was at 720 MB (the recommended tweak) for the virtual memory so I bumped it to SOTOMac's 1024.
My path to get there was slightly different...I'm using XP home edition so I went:
control panel, system, sys properties, advanced, performance, settings, performance options, advanced tab,virtual memory, change tab, ...then enter your settings in the windows and click OK. I wasn't prompted to reboot but did anyway. I will post any intere