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Probably the biggest bottleneck in computers today is the memory latency and bandwith. It takes time to transfer data from one place to another, and to store it in between being worked upon. While distance has an effect on the speed of this during operations on data, the bigger issue is the technology for storing the information. Alas, you have a number of different storage area on your computer of varying size and speed. Normal (non-CF) hard drives are not fast enough to feed the processor, hence you have RAM. RAM works for programs in general, but for operations currently underway or too be revisited, it is too slow, and you thus have a number of CPU level caches.
This goes both ways. As have been said, your RAM can only hold so much data. When it has been used up, it shifts the data over to the next level of working memory storage. In this case from RAM to hard drive swap file. That is why a reboot helps, because it clears the memory.
Another way to fix it would be to increase the size of your swap. Start the Control Panel, open System. A window pops up with a number of tabs, click Advanced and then under the Performance heading, click settings for "Visual effects, [...] virtual memory". Once more click on Advanced, but in the new window named Performance Options that has popped up. Click on Change under Virtual Memory. Either set a bigger Custom size, or switch to System Managed Size.
HTH
Martin
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