McFiona, If you have plenty of unused space on your hard drive, go to system and click on the advanced tab and click settings under performance. In the performance options window, click on the advanced tab. Here you can click the custom option and allocate an amount of your hard drive to be used as ram. Instant virtaul memory upgrade. The other suggestions of cleaning up registry errors are also good advice. There's a free one out there Norton backs, but can't remember right now. Will post it later if it comes to mind.