Just recently I've started having problems with programs freezing up. It seems that everything else is fine until I start to do things; such as simply clicking on the start button for example. The menu pops up, but it sticks and that freezes, too. I can open windows such as 'my computer', but nothing happens when I try to go from there.
Also, a few moments after windows starts up and gets going, an error message comes up "an error occured in 0x###### in memory 0x0000000.

Does this all mean that I have a bad stick of RAM?

could be a bad stick, but not likely, more often it is a case of memory that is full, check that you have enough 1GB+, also under the task manager see if your CPU usage is high, standardly even running a dozen apps, downloading, etc it should not be above 20%.

Posting your system specs helps in getting more specific and more useful help.

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</Dream In Code>
-William. § (marvin_gohan)

I have a 2.65 gig pentium 4
512 mb of ram
Windows XP pro service pack two (everytime I try to update it for the most recent update, it freezes) I have 60 something gigs of hard drive free space, but...

I was doing a disk cleanup just now and I looked at the cpu usage and it was around 60%. When it was done it was around 1 or 2

ok, you're clear of a spyware or equivalent then.
and it doesn't sound like a low memory issue either.

Try running a defrag to align your files, it isn't a big help, but if a system is being picky for some reason it can help.
The fact that it happens while dealing with Windows files could be a big problem.
Try running 10 or 11 different programs, anything, small large, and see if you have any issues, that should be enough to push your RAM the same as an installer and should give some feedback on your RAM situation.

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</Dream In Code>
-William. § (marvin_gohan)

i could very well be a virus..with having that much going on...what kind of anti-virus u using?

I doubt a virus, as William_Wilson said, CPU usage being high when the machine isn't doing anything is generally a sure sign of that. Is your CPU fan working? I had a rig that was acting like yours and it was because the thing was overheating and just locking up. If your fan is good then do a virus scan (if you can) and see what that throws up, but I don't think it will be that.

The other thing I can think of is programs running in the background. Have you installed anything recently that runs in the background of Windows (it should be in the syatem tray next to the clock) sometimes these programs run and are not needed, close any that are running but not in immediate use and see if that helps.

If you can install Mother Board monitor and FreeRAM XP, FreeRAM will show you your RAM usage and is very acurate.

Let us know how you get on!

well, I sill cannot figure out what is wrong, but if I found out that if I click cancel, then cancel again everything is back to normal.

thanks for all your help!

probably some program running on the background that has some bugs or errors.. did you install a program lately?