bbfi,
Wow....It is apparent that you are suffering from a memory leakage problem. This can occur for many different reasons.
Many programs do not release memory resources when you exit them, leaving the memory marked as in use when it's actually free. Programs are supposed to release all memory resources upon exiting. But many don't. This memory loss is called "leakage," and it is cumulative: Run a program with a leak ten times and you'll lose ten times as much memory.
1. You could have old or conflicting Windows device drivers. An example would be you might actually have two entirely different video drivers on your system and Windows could actually be alternately using both of them.
To prevent this problem, First boot the computer in Safe Mode by pressing and holding the F8 key during startup, after the DOS memory check has completed.
While in Safe Mode select Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Devices. Click on all the devices and see if the various drivers have any yellow or red exclamation marks (which indicates a driver conflict) and also determine if there are any duplicate drivers that can be eliminated.
You may have to delete and reload a driver to correct these problems. Duplicate drivers can and should be deleted.
2. Check your setting of Virtual Memory management. (Right click on My Computer/Properties/Performance/Virtual Memory tab)
Make sure that "Let Windows manage my virtual memory settings" is checked.
3. At this point, we need to figure out what program or operation is causing it.
The only way I know of to accomplish this is to disable all non-essential programs in the startup list so that Windows does not load them.
Firewall and Avast process should be kept in the startup list as well as Systray.
Monitor your system usage to see if there is any degradation. If not, then put back 2 programs at a time and repeat the procedure until you isolate the program/s that are causing the leak.
Then we can work on those to see if there is a patch or fix we can get ahold of to plug the leak up.
4. Refer to this article...it may help:
http://www.altacan.com/sitepages/product_pages/Tips_inter/resource/resource.htmGo down to the section entitled: "Memory Leakage and Restarting Windows"
5. You can also try a post at www. protonic.com
They provide free technical assistance on just about anything.
Sorry I cannot give you any more specific advice, but many factors can cause memory leakage. I'm kind of shootin in the dark here.

Good luck.
techie101