How much memory to allow XP to run well?

I have got currently 384mb of SD Ram and windows xp was running on it reasonably well at this level until I upgraded to Internet Explorer 7. It will usually show "page cannot be displayed" while launching some web pages and modem doesnt disconnect before page completes. The disconnec problem started after Internet Explorer 7 was installed. Any ideas?

Mostly Windows XP users get along fine with 512mb to 1gb of system memory. The processor with the L2Cache on said processor, the motherboard FSB speed, the hard drive speed, the video card speed, shares memory with the system, etc, and many other things. Hence, 384MB is very little memory for today's modern operating system like Windows XP.

I think that 384mb of ram might have been sufficient to run Windows XP with reasonable speed on the hardware. But since its intial release Windows XP has grown with the addition of 3 service packs and numerous other updates and not only that, security software which is required for protection eats up a good amount of Ram as well.

You normally load a lot of programs and switch windows as well that might load slower due to the increased overhead, but I might think a page should load as fast as it ever did. Because its slower, you could look into disabling some of the IE7 features such as phishing filter and addons. It is also possible for malware to cause the slow loads too.

Thanks for the replies guys. I appreciated the information that you have given me about other processes which usually consumes memory. I am able to get upto 512mb for some extra dollars but I could go for more to avoid any future issues.