i have been experiancing alot of memory leakage,help

I have been experiancing alot of memory leakage , and i dont no wat to do. programs seem to overuse the the ram, then its suppose to. ex: explorer.exe has been using up 50mb ram and i got no spyware or viruses ive turned off all the bells and whistles, all the fancy stuff.some programs seem to run in the background even soon after i have exited them. termination of explorer.exe every once in a while, it crashes unexpecdly.i sometimes get this kind of messege when running programs

application error

the instruction at "0x65e27829" refrenced memory at "0x008cb239".the memory could not be read.

click on ok to terminate the program
click on cancel to debug the program

what should i do? replace the ram?

Computer:
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
OS Service Pack Service Pack 1
Internet Explorer 6.0.2800.1106 (IE 6.0 SP1)
Computer Name AK-47 (AK-47)
User Name Shirin
Logon Domain AK-47

Motherboard:
CPU Type AMD Athlon XP, 1666 MHz (6.25 x 267) 2000+
Motherboard Name ECS K7S5A (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 AMR, 2 SDR DIMM, 2 DDR DIMM, Audio)
Motherboard Chipset SiS 735
System Memory 256 MB (PC2100 DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type AMI (08/09/02)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM2)
Communication Port Printer Port (LPT1)

Display:
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420 (64 MB)
3D Accelerator nVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420
Monitor Sampo AlphaScan 812S (000001)

Multimedia:
Audio Adapter SiS 7012 Audio Device

Storage:
Floppy Drive Floppy disk drive
Disk Drive ST340016A (40 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/100)
Optical Drive AXV CD/DVD-ROM SCSI CdRom Device (Virtual DVD-ROM)
Optical Drive LG DVD-ROM DRD8160B (16x/48x DVD-ROM)
Optical Drive MSI CD-RW MS-8340S (40x/12x/48x CD-RW)

Partitions:
C: (NTFS) 38154 MB (28884 MB free)

Input:
Keyboard Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
Mouse Microsoft PS/2 Mouse
Game Controller Microsoft PC-joystick driver

Network:
Primary IP Address 209.197.132.64
Primary MAC Address 00-00-00-00-00-00
Network Adapter WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface (209.197.132.64)
Modem Intel(R) 536EP Modem

Peripherals:
Printer hp deskjet 656c series

 

Test the RAM before you replace it. Memtest is a pretty good freeware program.


memtest

 

usage

Hello,
I'd get anyone of the free memory monitors/defragers/optimizers and especially one that shows exactly what is using how much ram. Sounds like apps aren't closeing completely and you've got quite a bit of apps there. Here is a good resource for this problem. I'd do some searching on your video card optimizing and this may sound dumb, but have checked your sound/video bios settings? Good luck.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/using/productdoc/en/default.asp?url=/WINDOWSXP/home/using/productdoc/en/SAG_MPmonperf_15.asp

 

i have checked my sound/video bios settings.some settings in my registry could be screwed up and causing all this. like the memory dumps.

 

Memory

what type of memory do you have? Like other posters suggested Run the memtest86 program.

 

found no problem with the ram.