[andrewas]

You can use the services icon under the control pannel to restart without having to reset the system.

AS for a permanent fix, it could be that a few massive logs and temp files are taking up too much RAM, so clearing them out may go a long way to improving things. Also, RAM is cheap so a few 512Mb sticks shoudnt be too hard to obtain.

Certain viruses do terminate processes, but they mostly target anti-virus processes. A virus scan is always a good idea though,