My system is running slow.. With no programs open, the system says that it is using 97% of my ram.... I don't have a clue

"The system says"??? Where are you getting this number? And, have you run a full virus scan with updated definitions?

go to start and go to run then type in "msconfig" go to the startup and there u can unclick or click away what u want to run or not to run. just make sure that u click on the right checks dont click on anything that u need :)

You can get a true value of how much RAM is free from typing "dxdiag" in Start > Run. Also, a program like Memturbo will tell you this information. I would NOT recommend using System Information to view this, because it will "eat" an increasing portion of your RAM and not give it back whenever you refresh the view (or open it). Not sure why they couldn't code a decent System Information program for Windows ME, but they didn't! -Burbble

Msinfo eats ram?? Wouldn't have anything to do with the info still being in vcache, which won't be made smaller until required, would it?? And, dxdiag doesn't "eat" ram? Memturbo!! A highly recommended swapfile and disk exerciser. Serves no other purpose.

It's not "MSInfo" on Windows ME. Its some weird extension of the help file. To my knowledge, dxdiag does not. And MemTurbo will free up some of your RAM from programs that don't when you close them, but it's kind of pointless to have it running in the background unless you have a very limited amount of RAM. -Burbble

"And MemTurbo will free up some of your RAM from programs that don't when you close them" Don't believe it for a minute. It's an illusion!! Programs like this force windows to make vcache smaller by making large requests for memory. This is exactly what will happen when a REAL program needs memory. And, the programs force windows to write memory areas to the swapfile unnecessarily. As I said, it's a good swapfile and disk exerciser, but nothing else.