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"RAM is maxed at 1 Gig because techs have been unable to get the other Gig slot to work for some reason."

Sometimes memory sticks from different manufacturers won't work well together on the same motherboard, even if their specs are an exact match. Occasionally, sticks from the same manufacturer have the same problem and need to be paired with sticks from the same batch. Of course, there is also the chance that the problem is the slot on the motherboard itself or the timing of the North & South bridge chips on the motherboard. I'd do some research on the motherboard itself (support pages & user forums on the motherboard manufacturer's web site)- see if any one else has had the same problem and/or if there are chipset driver updates available. Make sure that the ram sticks match the boards requirements and try using only the brand certified by the MB manufacturer. After checking out the MB, you could try buying 2 new matching sticks as a pair and relegate the original stick to an older system, if one is available. (Corsair and Kingston have generally good reputations for memory.)

Sometimes, you just get stuck with an older MB that refuses to upgrade because of a flaw design in the North and South bridge chips or supporting chipset drivers and the manufacturer quit trying to overcome the flaw. :-(

"I haven't partitioned any of my HD's."

You could use Partition Magic to reconfigure one of the drives, but don't do it on a mirrored drive. The flash drive you mentioned would be the easiest and fastest way to reconfigure - just make sure it's always available or Windows will reconfigure itself by creating a new swap file on the main drive. Once you've reconfigured, don't forget to delete the old swap files on all the other drives and then defrag them.

"I have 5 or so HD's tons of GIGABYTES."

With large hard drives, defragging can really improve performance. Look for a good defrag program that will allow you to specify how to arrange files and blank space on the disk and research the best schemes for the way you use your system.

Hope all this helps.
RT