Windows is very much running out of RAM, and is pounding swap?
Were you able to look at the process sizes, so you know roughly how much virtual memory DrRacket was using, and whether any other processes were using lots of virtual memory?
It could be that DrRacket was using a huge amount of virtual memory, or it could be that some other process was, but you were noticing it in DrRacket because a GC cycle was leading to thrashing.
If DrRacket is indeed using a huge amount of memory, you might take a look at the code you were running in DrRacket, and whether all the memory usage of that code is necessary. One of the first things to look at is whether you're using tail calls everywhere you can in recursion-intensive parts of the code.
Also, I actually disable swap on Linux and Windows workstations I set up -- any process of mine that doesn't fit in RAM is dead to me. My workstations are 5 year-old laptops with 2-3 GB of RAM each, and so far that has been more than enough RAM.
-- http://www.neilvandyke.org/ ____________________ Racket Users list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
