Hi, Hawk Nothing unusual about your virtual memory being larger than your built-in memory; the computer is just using part of your hard drive space as temporary operational memory, to augment the dedicated 128 megs hard-wired for that purpose -- much like the 'scratch memory' that Photoshop uses for jobs bigger than the RAM would otherwise allow. Certainly the amount of memory available will be a big factor in your problem -- 128 is the bare minimum for a G4, and a gigabyte would show you a big improvement and stability -- but another factor may be some preferences that have got out of hand. If you're running Cumulus, for instance, that sucker starts off at about 500K and can swell to a couple of megabytes over time. The answer in that particular case is to go into the System folder and trash the preference file; Cumulus will start a new one the next time you launch it, and you'll have to put up with the minor nuisance of repositioning its search windows and query forms the way you want them, but it'll run like a scalded cat for the next few months. You can also hunt in there for preference files left behind by programs you no longer use; they can all be dragged to the Trash too. Ditto any text encoding files for languages you don't need (when was the last time you wrote an e-mail in Hindi or Mandarin?) and any printer definitions you don't need (there are probably 100 or so for printers that aren't even made any more). In the end, though, memory's the answer. Getting cheaper all the time, fortunately. Cheers, Doug ----------------------------------------------------------- For information about MUGLO: http://www.freewebs.com/muglo -----------------------------------------------------------