I recently upgraded my Gateway from 64 Mb of RAM to 256. I also installed an ethernet card, an HP All in One Printer, and SBC Yahoo DSL. For a few days, everything ran perfectly. Now, about 2 weeks in, I can barely boot up. I can run only one program at a time, if I'm lucky, before my system tells me it's out of memory. How can this be? I don't have Windows task manager to tell me what is eating up all the memory. When I hit Ctrl+Alt+Del, it just takes me to the close program box. Is there any place I can download a copy of task manager so I can see where my resources are?

I am running Windows 98.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Have you run any spyware removal tools?

Check out the "Helping yourself" thread at the top of our Security forum. I'd be willing to bet that using your new DSL connection brought in a bunch of nasties...

I should also mention that I am running Norton Internet Security 2004. I have run a few of the recommended removal tools, but not in the last two weeks. I will try that and let you know what happens. Thanks for the advice.

I ran adaware, but was unable to download the updates as I could not run both my internet connection and adaware simutaneously. I received a "not enough memory to open this program" error. Is there anywhere to download windows task manager so I can see what is eating my system alive?

My goal is to free up enough memory to get the downloads and updates needed to free my system of the problem.

The Task Manager in Windows 9.x/ME is limited by the fact that it does not list all running processes, nor much info about the processes it does list. Try a replacement such as APM.

TRy to use the MSCONFIG UTILITY, go to start---run and type MSCONFIG and whena windows comes up click on the STARTUP TAB and you should uncheck everything but

--SCANREG --LOADPOWERPROFILE X there are 2
--SYSTRAY --AND OF COURSE YOU ANTiVIRUS

I downloaded Windows 9x/Me Task Manager just to get something that I could use to kill some programs. I found about 100 applications running that had no name and were eating up my entire CPU. Once I killed the programs, I was able to download the latest version of Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy. I was also able to run a full system scan using Norton Antivirus 2004. In all the three programs found and deleted over 400 files and cookies. Everything is back to normal now and I will be running regular checkups with the above mentioned programs.

I am not thrilled with the Windows task manager functionality and will try the recommended APM.

Thanks for everyone's advice.

There are a couple of thing you can do to help prevent infections.

The first thing would be a hardware firewall, Norton Internet Security is good, but with DSL, a hardware firewall really is recommended.

The next thing would be to install something that blocks pests from getting into your system should they get past the firwalls. Something like SpywareBlaster which can be downloaded from here:
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html
Remember to keep it updated!