this is somewhat related to video encoding, but more importantly generic computing.

anyways, back in this thread, CaptainVideo had mentioned how he has problems with WME crashing and whatnot. now while I have yet to experience any major crashes that werent easy to correct, I have noticed that between the 2 computer's I have here, memory usage from WME is wildly different.

PC1: (specs located under the computer details button above), windows install is around 5 months old or so. probably tons of installed codecs on here beyond your basic divx-based codecs.
WME mem usage: approx. 160MB

PC2: 733MHZ P3, 512MB RAM, 20GB HD, Windows Server 2003 customized for a workstation environment. fairly new install (no more than a few weeks to a month maximum). only codecs I knowingly have installed are xvid, divx, and oggds. everything else is standard windows stuff.
WME mem usage: no more than 20MB during encoding.

and coinciding with the heavy mem usage on PC1, certain bits do take quite some time to load up where during the wait the program pretty much freezes.

any ideas on what I can do to alleviate this some, short of reformatting? (ive got a reformat planned in the future, but im waiting till I can get a larger hard drive before I do so.)