Processes keep using more and more memory, eventually crashes.

[TamTamJam]

Hi, two days ago, for no apparent reason, my antivirus process, ekrn.exe, started using lots of memory (~200,000k as opposed to the regular ~75,000k). This eventually crashed all open programs, next went explorer and I had to force shutdown my PC. This happens now everytime I turn my PC on, although it's not always ekrn.exe. It's also been my internet browser process. After gaining 400,000k, it crashes everything. It doesn't start immediately loading on memory, but it's started now, my browsers using 145,000k as opposed to the usualy 100,000k. I know this is probably going to end in the hard drive being reformatted, but is there anything else I can do?

[Darkimmortal]

It could only crash all other programs if you have your pagefile disabled, which is always a bad idea.

[TamTamJam]

XP is the OS and pagefile isn't disabled. By crash other programs I mean it just lags to the point I can't do anything but move the cursor.