Need help troubleshooting possible memory leak (W2K)

[cyberserious]

I think my Dell laptop might be having a memory leak, that's precipitated by my network driver. On startup or a reboot, I will sometimes get error messages like "Your PC is running low on memory..." and my network driver won't load, plus my Norton Autoprotect will also fail to load, and give an error message. A reboot or shutdown and restart will usually fix the problem for that bootup session, but the problem will only reoccur randomly again on future startups or reboots.

This is an Inspiron 4100 (recently out of warrantee) with 256MB, and 10 GB. My network is the Intel Anypoint home network -external USB 10MBPS phoneline adapter. I installed the latest network driver and software. When it's functioning, everything works fine, except for the network printer.
Fred

[PCnoob]

Hello Cyberserious,

Do you frequently defrag your laptop? clean up all the cookies and internet temp. files? If you get that 'low on memory' error message again, try increase the virtual memory size. (control panel - system - advanced tap - Performance Options..) In addition, you can try to download a program that free up some ram (save yourself some $$$). Sorry I don't know what a good free memory software to recommend but I think you can try to look for memturbo.

If your Norton Autoprotect fail to load then you should check for the setting. Perhaps, you have disabled it? Or you can try to reinstall the software.

Good luck dude

PCnoob

[cyberserious]

PCnoob,
Yes, I did all those things, and the laptop otherwise works fine and works faster than it ever did on it's last OS Windows ME.

The errors I experience on some bootups are "Norton Autoprotect is unable to protect your email" then it also fails to load. "Your PC is running low on memory..." and "Unable to find the ISS server" and the Intel Anypoint driver also fails to load. I have to reboot or shutdown and restart to fix it.

Do you think my problem could be my Intel Anypoint network? The Intel network adapter for the laptop is an external USB device, rather than a Cardbus, like on the newest home phoneline networks. Do you think this could be my problem? I am seriously considering to get a new phoneline network such as one by Linksys or SMC to replace the existing Intel Anypoint. The Intel was working fine until recently when it started to fail under Windows ME, then got progressively worse under Windows 2000.

The Intel device has been discontinued a few months ago, and is therefore no longer supported, so I can no longer ask Intel for help. My problem is beyond their knowledge base.
Fred