John - there is a utility available called resource monitor that puts an icon on your taskbar showing current state of resources. You have to install it - you do that by going to the control panel, clicking on "add / remove programs", picking the "windows setup" tab, clicking on "system tools", and adding the resource monitor. Another useful tool is the "system monitor" program which allows you to do real time graphing of many different system functions, like processor utilization, memory use, disk use, and so on.
With the resource monitor up, you can see when resources are getting low and take action before the system freezes. Also lets you know which programs are resource hogs, so you can avoid running too many copies at one time. The taskbar icon also changes color to show low resources - like a traffic light, yellow is caution and red is about to stop...
The various flavors of NT, including Windows 2000 and the upcoming Windows XP, have almost unlimited resource capability and I have never seen them hang on low resources. |
