question for my friend

[kotfquig]

ok i live in upstate ny, i mean my town is out there like yea..... but thats not for discussion, all my friends know when they have a computer problem to come to me. So tonight i get a call from my friend matt and hes telling me that his parents just got a new computer, so he got his old one, after setting it up in his room he tried running photoshop cs, and it gave him some problem about memory. Now he assumed the thing most people do thinking he had too many files saved not realizing it was talking about his ram. N e way i thought a simple restart would do it as the same problem has happened to me on programs and that would always fix it but it didnt. Now i tried talking him through taking out his ram and putting it back in but he couldnt find it by my description so im going over there tomarrow. Now basicly im just going to try that, run some tests, install some software to check for viruses and spyware, but i was wondering if there was anything else i was forgetting/dont know about?
unfortunatly i cant give you any more specifics then that as i said its not my computer and what i thought of will most likely work as long as the ram hasnt broken and its just a lil dust or glitch or w/e

so n e ideas before about 2 2maro (eastern time) would be really appreciated! thanks

[Monster_user]

He's got too much stuff running, and its trying up all his ram?

Such as Yahoo Messenger, WeatherBug, etc...

OR Spyware, which he wouldn't even know was running.

SWAP file space. This actually shouldn't be a problem, unless his computer nearly freezes each time he opens Photoshop.

[kotfquig]

no its not freezing, its just saying some error, and im not even sure the exact one (sorry) he just said it had something to do with the memory.
i told him to run task manager and we didnt see anything running out of the normal, just several programs. I know he doesnt have aim or yahoo messanger, and im pretty sure he doesnt have weather bug or anything even like that. He says that all of his other programs run fine, and this is the only program with any problem. Maybe reinstalling?
idk maybe ill just reformat it because like i said it was his familys computer and now its his, so that will get all the crap from his two little sisters and his parents
i just dont wanna go throught the several hours of work reinstalling everything

[Pestilence64]

What are his hardware specs, lets here what he has before you try anything else. And if you could see the error message and tell us that would help.

[War Hawk]

You could always increase virtual memory if the physical is only 256mb. Or like Monster said just stop some backround programs from running.