Motherboard: MSI K7N420D (nForce Crush12) CPU: Athlon XP 1700+ BIOS: Recent Memory: Crucial 512MB DDR Video: GeForce 2 GTS 64MB Permanent Storage: One 120GB 8MB WD, Four 40GB 60GXP disks in RAID 0 Drivers: All most recent available Windows Updates: All the most recent available Hello, This is such a baffling problem. First, the symptoms. For no apparent reason during idle with every process closed I can, my page file usage will surge to over 1.3GB of use. I sort the open processes by mem usage and none claim to be using anything more than 10MB. Obviously, my computer becomes very slow as the page file is thrashed and all physical memory is consumed. The only reason I can even get into my web browser is because I moved the page file to my RAID 0 array which is fast enough that it can, to an extent, handle the sudden demand of a 1.3GB page file. When my page file was on my 120GB and this problem began, it was useless to try to continue to use the computer. No programs were installed, uninstalled, or even settings changed before this problem began. I actually experienced it once before and the proble, for no apparent reason at all vanished completely. Unable to link the problem to an obviously leaky program or service, I underclocked my processor, FSB and AGP driving force to see if I might have hardware intermitently going out of tolerance. Advanced memory features were disabled. The problem persisted, and I returned to my previous settings. I ran a chkdsk on the disk to see if perhaps a service in kernel memory had become corrupt short of the point it wouldn't boot, but would cause sudden and massive memory leaks. Here are the results: ------------------- Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp. C:\Documents and Settings\6Pixel>chkdsk c: The type of the file system is NTFS. WARNING! F parameter not specified. Running CHKDSK in read-only mode. CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)... File verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)... Index verification completed. CHKDSK is recovering lost files. Recovering orphaned file 00010002.ci (185750) into directory file 6125. Recovering orphaned file 00010002.dir (185751) into directory file 6125. Recovering orphaned file CiFLfffc.000 (186101) into directory file 6125. Recovering orphaned file CiFLfffc.001 (186104) into directory file 6125. Recovering orphaned file CiFLfffc.002 (186105) into directory file 6125. CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)... Security descriptor verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal... Usn Journal verification completed. Correcting errors in the master file table's (MFT) BITMAP attribute. Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap. Windows found problems with the file system. Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these. 117178078 KB total disk space. 112342348 KB in 183036 files. 68816 KB in 16262 indexes. 0 KB in bad sectors. 305442 KB in use by the system. 65536 KB occupied by the log file. 4461472 KB available on disk. 4096 bytes in each allocation unit. 29294519 total allocation units on disk. 1115368 allocation units available on disk. C:\Documents and Settings\6Pixel> ------------------ When I specify /F to fix the disk upon a reboot, I do so. The CHKDSK begins, goes through the three stages and briefly I see the last message explaining the disk properties. When it reaches the end, presumably to fix the problem, the computer just black screens and restarts. At this point, I suspect some problem with the low level formatting of the disk and use DLGDIAG.exe (Western Digitals disk health check) to do a quick test. It comes back with no error code. The extended test recommends backing my data up prior to running. Not sure if it carries some risk of losing everything, I decided to stave off on running it. I am going to pull this disk and put it in an older Dell computer (PII 450, 440BX based) and see if I can successfully CHKDSK /F it while it is unlocked. My only fear is that it won't support addressing necessary to access the whole disk, and may cause damage during the 'repair' if fails to recognize it properly. Of course, this could just be an unrelated disk error. If the extended test comes back alright on the disk, I will be running SFC to see if I can find a file that has become corrupt. The only consistancy software wise seems to be that I ran the game browser "All-Seeing Eye" prior to the problem beginning last time, and I was also using it when this problem began. This program does not store anything in the startup, so it is probably irrelevent. This is a toughy, and any help/suggestions are certainly appreciated. Problem pictures located at: http://www.mindspring.com/~dgallivan/temp/processes.gif Doug PS: It is no good that only after typing this WHOLE message and trying to post it that I was informed that my ISP (mindspring) is banned from posting messages. I had to PCAnywhere into a remote server to post instead. That was almost a disaster in itself.

Is the page file system managed ???If so then you specify the values ... the minimum should be 132 mb and the max should be 264 mb . I have seen page files grow like that when the system manages it. to get to page file settings >> right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced tab > performance settings > advanced > change .. then specify min 132 mb and max 264 mb If your page file still grows then you MAY have a virus on your system

I am at work so finally I can follow up. The problem magically took care of itself for NO reason again. Very frustrating, but I'm glad it's gone again - for now.