Many people run into this one sooner or later. Briefly, your PC runs on a mix of hard drive stored stuff and memory stored stuff - swapping stuff around according to need. Mem-store is speed-of-light while the hard drive is physical platters and access arms(much much slower!) This paging is based upon the amount of memory in your PC...many refurbs have only a limited amount of RAM stuck in them as this is a way that companies cut corners. You don't usually run into this problem unless you work with many apps open or you load in newer(and bigger) software progs. For machines running XP or later a half gig is not really enough but you can boost a refurb machine(usually to 2 gbs) for around $35-45 a stick. Most laptops have two slots for memory accessible via a bottom panel...the same is true for desktop PCs but there you have to remove the cover to get at the MOBO(motherboard)...check the specs for your PC to find out how much memory it can handle. Another thing involved in paging is the available HD space you have. Generally you need to keep 20% of your HD open for swapping. when you get to crowding your HD this problem of virt mem comes along. Backup &Clean out all the gimmegimmes that the maker stuck into your PC - all the free offers etc and old web pages and work files....then defrag and back up the whole kit and kaboodle after the fact. Then have a look via the SYSTEM applet of the control panel and a look at the sizes showing on your MY Computer display. Here you can adjust the paging and also decide if you need to get a bigger HD. I recently participated in an auction of over 6 terabytes of HDs for around $100(best deal I ever lost out on) so you can get HD spaces for pennies these days and many people go with thumb/flash drives which come as big as 16-32 gb these days and they are a pocket-able storage option to consider for bkps. I carry my e-book library on a 1gigger around my neck(holds dozens of e-books).
How you use and group stuff on your HD is a big and important key to doing backups and organizing things. If you run multiple OSes on a single HD, those partitions are not available to a different OS but they take up part of your total HD space available. If at all possible you should alter the auto/default drive and folder placement for software you add to your PC. Don't settle for where Microsoft or Roxio or whoever thinks is the best choice of foldernames etc. The PC generally doesn't care where you put the code it just has to be able to find it and run it. Calling the program Tom's CD is much nicer than a mouthful like "The Great and Wonderful Magnificent and Marvelous Computer Company CD Program" which is what swellheads in the CEO chair think is the way of the world for its customers to follow. You can put things that change little(like your OS stuff) on drive C and your pictures,movies,and games on other logical partitons. Now you only need to backup the stuff that changes a lot and the rest only as needed so backing up is a much easier and faster deed-to-do - then, when and if your PC crashes, you are right there with an easypeasy getupandgoagain scenario instead of a horror and mess to fix.
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