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Honestly, in my opinion more RAM will not help either your conflicts or your low resources problem.

Have you got your background program list trimmed down? I see you're running a couple of Norton programs? Have you tried disabling these temporarily to see if it has any effect?

Yes, a selective startup with only *StateMgr running increases resources to 92% and the mysterious empty white error message box has not occurrred.  The mystery empty message is not limited to MS programs, it struck again during a session with Norton Systemworks.  Tnx for your opinion that RAM isn't the root cause.

Another oddity: after defrag using Norton Speed Disk there are two areas containing the swap file, one at the very bottom of the map and another in the frequently used area.  The popup comment indicates each is 100% defraged.

 

"Reinstall ME"  requires formatting the hard drive, correct?  Although I frequently backup my special files like address book and favorites the thought of wiping the drive clean is frightful.  Won't my 6.0 IE drop back a few revisions creating the danger of losing communications with the MS web page?       ps - Your comments are appreciated, I's sure this discussion helps others, too.

Yes, reinstalling requires you to format the hard drive. However, once Windows is reinstalled, you can visit the Windows update page and download and install everything needed to bring IE and other Windows programs up to date.

If you post back with your system, I can direct you to the appropriate reinstall page.

Osprey- Thanks for the offer.  At my son's suggestion I've disconnected all the USB cables.  Still too early to tell if this helps.  I have a bunch of abandoned software so reformatting seems like a great idea.  Incidentally, another son suggests partitioning so that reformatting in the future won't be such a big deal, comment? -jacksonbva

Microsoft Windows Me                                            Version 4.90.3000   Build 3000 
 
System Model Dimension 8100                                  System Type X86-based PC 
Processor               Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1300MHz GenuineIntel ~1296 Mhz 
BIOS Version Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS                                      Version 1.10 A02 
 
Total Physical Memory 127.04 MB                Available Physical Memory 216.00 KB 
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB                               Available Virtual Memory 1.77 GB 

Drive 20GB  with  about 10GB free                                         NAV reports 120k files

Printers HP500C (Parallel Port)                                                          HP7260 (USB)    

Scanners UMAX Astra 3400                                                               Primefilm 1800

Camera Canon A300 (wow!)

Reinstalling is not a big deal, but I understand what he's saying. If you have a second partition, you can keep all your important stuff there and not have to worry about backing it up when you reinstall. I have a second hard drive for that purpose. Programs must be reinstalled anyway, that's most of the work.

I'll add one suggestion that may save time later on. I use a utility called Ghost that comes as part of Norton Systemworks Pro (my son uses the AV, the rest of the programs aren't of any use to me). After reinstalling ME and all my applications the first time, I created a backup image using Ghost that fit on two CD-RWs. Now if I need to reinstall, it's a five-minute operation restoring the Ghost image. There are other programs that work similarly.

Hope that helps.

Many thanks!  Reformat and reinstall did the trick.  Ghost is a must....this work took 3 mandays.

Some learnings:

Using WinExplorer I reviewed the entire directory searching for unique data files and burned them on 4 CD's, about 500MB each, one is mostly photo jpegs.   (Later, while reloading I found Nero had set all files to read only.  I have a huge Outlook file system and it was easy to rename the newly created Outlook.pst and drag the old from the CD, clicking properties and unclicking read only)

(Unfortunately I went halfway on the reinstall and did not reformat C: because of the concern over loosing data even though I had burned the files on CDs )  On booting the reinstall-over-existing the desktop icons appeared but a qnc error (probably from Lotus Notes) immediately locked up the system so I was forced to use DOS. 

(The decision to reinstall over existing OS locked me out of the ability to format C: using My Computer).  I  booted from the WinMe reinstall disk using option 2 which provides DOS in C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.

 After wiping the disk and installing WinMe the startup screen depth is only 16 colors, a simple VGA driver.  One of the DELL disks requires "more depth" so I attempted to find the driver for the flat screen P780 monitor.  Actually I should have been looking for a driver for the video card, an ATI 32 Radeon.  Using WinExplorer I thought I could "see" the files on a Dell disk labelled P780 quick setup.  Autostart on that disk provides info but no link to install a driver.  I manged to install a wrong driver and got a blank screen.  Had to reformat & reinstall WinMe again several times.  Finally, with the 16 color VGA driver I connected to this Discussion Board and found a thread on this issue which linked me to the correct Dell page for a download.  Bingo, it worked!

AGAIN, MANY THANKS FOR YOUR HELP AND TO THE OTHERS WHO SUPPPORT THIS BOARD.