An update, maybe postive news! Having now been up for 5 days, 9 hours, (following through the last posting) I am *still* able to start the XP VM. Now I am trying it from suspended state, instead of shutting down XP. So far I've done it twice, I think, probably about 1-2 days apart. That is significant progress compared to previous experience. What changed? Well, the only thing I recall changing was updating to the latest Microsoft Office:Mac. Strange, eh? But I run all the office apps all the time almost..Word, Powerpoint, Entourage, Excel, and that usage pattern hasn't changed. Wonder if microsoft was hosing something up in my system or eating memory somehow? Like that never happened....