Virtual Memory always maxing out!

Hi guys, I run Windown XP home on my home computer and I always seem to run out of virtual memory. I was looking at the Paging File and it is at 450MB [about 90% capacity] when having nothing running. I find IE just shuts off often and runs slowly, in fact everything runs slowly a lot of the time.

I have Norton Antivirus on my System and use Verizon Online and they seem to take a lot of running memory and could be a lot of the problem. But, could it also be hidden files that do not show up on Task Manager?..how do I access these files and turn off some of these hidden processes?..I have no idea and could use help. Do I need to expand my Virtual Memory and how would I do that ?[I have already expanded the paging file before].

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

BUZ

 

How much RAM in this system?

It sounds like you may have spyware choking your system. Follow MA's spyware guide here to deal with that.

A couple of other things to let you scrutinize your paging file:

In Task Manager > Processes > View > Select Columns > tick 'Virtual Memory Size' will allow you to ID processes that are consuming the most.

There's a nifty guide here for setting up an MMC console to monitor your paging file.