For BillD and perhaps others:

In many versions of Windows, running out of resources has nothing to do with the ammount of RAM your PC has. Windows have managed these resources in various ways, ranging from Win 3.x where GDI and USER resources were limited to 64K each to NT which I believe sets no limit.

This is the area I believe where most problems (at least ones a user becomes aware of) occur - other memory may get "lost" but as John has noted, there is the swap file and computers have rather more memory availible that the limits imposed by versions of Windows on the resouces - it is the weakest link if you like.

Every time a window is opened (even edit boxes, etc are windows), System Resources are used, every time a drawing operation takes place, resources are allocated and are not always released properly - often because of poor programing - in simple terms, if you ask Windows for a Pen to draw, it is your responsibility to return it when done....

This leads me to program crashes - as far as I understand it, if a program terminates abnormally, the resources assosciated with it may not be released so one that crashes regulalry is not just a pain for someone trying to use it, it is also bad news for everything else.

Jon