I saw a string of NT Authority/Network Service entries from the moment I started up my pc. Spam/Advertising/Phishing, and Scam Virus/Spyware/Malware danger Other Term of Use or Code of Conduct violation Hate Speech and Discrimination Suicide or self-injury Child exploitation or abuse Harassment is any behavior intended to disturb or upset a person or group of people. Threats include any threat of suicide, violence, or harm to another. Any content of an adult theme or inappropriate to a community web site. Any image, link, or discussion of nudity. Any behavior that is insulting, rude, vulgar, desecrating, or showing disrespect. Any behavior that appears to violate End user license agreements, including providing product keys or links to pirated software. Any image, link, or discussion related to child pornography, child nudity, or other child abuse or exploitation. The NT AUTHORITY account is a built in account mostly used to run XP Services.  Many XP Services run under the NT AUTHORITY account (it is like a User account but you will not see it in your Users list) and there are different levels for different Services.  You can see some of them as belonging to running Processes in Task Manager and you can see them all with increased granularity if you use Process Explorer (see below for a link).
The types are:
NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM  (System Services)
NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE  (Local Services)
NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE (Network Services)
You can look up events on the following World Wide Web site and get some ideas.  This is where folks have events they see and then post up their questions, ideas and solutions:
http://www.eventid.net/
If you find your event in the discussion, the first idea or discussion does not necessarily mean it is the "answer" for your situation, so read through all of the ideas to find the one that sounds most like your situation, you get bored or find a satisfactory explanation.
The most interesting logs are usually the Application and System.
Some logs such as Security and Internet Explorer may be completely empty or have only a few items.  The default
settings for XP is not to log all that activity unless you need to troubleshoot some issue in those areas.  If you enable the logging for them the logs fill up quickly and could negatively effect your system performance with all the extra (usually unnecessary) activity.
If you have Microsoft Office installed, it has its own logs and they may be empty or occasional boring activity or very little activity if there is no problem with your Office applications.  This is normal.
Not every event is a problem, some are informational messages that things are working okay and some are warnings.
However, no event should defy reasonable explanation.
Each event is sorted by Date and Time.  Errors will have red Xs, Warnings will have yellow !s.   Information messages have white is.  Not every Error or Warning event means there is a serious issue.  Some are excusable at startup time when Windows is booting.  Try to find just the events at the date
and time around your problem.
If you double click an event, it will open a Properties window with more information.  On the right are black up and down arrow buttons to scroll through the open events. The third button that looks like two pages on top of each other is used to copy the event details to your Windows clipboard.
When you find an interesting event that occurred around the time of your issue, click the third button under the up and down arrows to copy the details and then you can paste the details (right click, Paste or CTRL-V) the detail text back here for analysis.  Remove any personal information from your information after pasting if you are compelled to do so.
If you paste an Event, it will look something like this boring system startup event:
Event Type:    Information
Event Source:    Service Control Manager
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    7035
Date:        7/14/2010
Time:        5:54:18 PM
User:        Jose
Computer:    Computer
Description:
The Remote Access Connection Manager service was successfully sent a start control.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
To get a fresh start on any Event Viewer log, you can choose to clear the log (backing up the log is offered),  then reproduce your issue, then look at just the events around the time of your issue and troubleshoot the events that are happening when you have your issue.
If you want another set of eyeballs on your memory situation that does not involve speculations, do this:
Click Start, Run and in the box enter:
msinfo32
Click OK, and when the System Summary info appears, click Edit, Select All, Copy and then paste back here.
There will be some personal information (like System Name and User Name), and whatever appears to be private information to you, just delete from the pasted information.
Download Process Explorer so you can see what is "really" running on your system, especially behind those multiple svchosts Processes you see running in Task Manager. Download Process Explorer from here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
You'll like Process Explorer when you get the hang of it.  Process Explorer is the Windows Task Manager on steroids.  Process Explorer installs nothing so it will not slow your system down since it only runs on demand.  Process Explorer may look a little intimidating at first since it presents so much information, but you will start to get to like the way it works when you are looking for performance problems.   You can even tell PE that you want it to be your new default "Task Manager" from now on.  You can still run the original Task Manger too.
Once you get Process Explorer running, expand the columns, drag the corners of the display to make it bigger, etc. so you can see the most information as possible in the window.  Now you can really see everything that is running on the system.
Here is a screenshot of my poor system when I use Process Explorer:
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/2567/processexplorer.png
The CPU column is usually the most interesting to get started with performance issues - who is using the most? Spam/Advertising/Phishing, and Scam Virus/Spyware/Malware danger Other Term of Use or Code of Conduct violation Hate Speech and Discrimination Suicide or self-injury Child exploitation or abuse Harassment is any behavior intended to disturb or upset a person or group of people. Threats include any threat of suicide, violence, or harm to another. Any content of an adult theme or inappropriate to a community web site. Any image, link, or discussion of nudity. Any behavior that is insulting, rude, vulgar, desecrating, or showing disrespect. Any behavior that appears to violate End user license agreements, including providing product keys or links to pirated software. Any image, link, or discussion related to child pornography, child nudity, or other child abuse or exploitation.