Iexplore.exe – The memory could not be “written”

There's a KB article adressing Adobe Reader crashes/memory issues:

Errors and freezes -- Adobe Reader -- Windows

Different factors can cause system errors, including conflicts among device drivers, software, and hardware, and corrupt elements in specific files. Although a system error may occur only when you work with Adobe Reader, Adobe Reader may not necessarily be the cause--it may be the only application that is memory- or processor-intensive enough to expose the problem.

I've seen a similar result happen - but the problem isn't lack of memory; it's a process that eats up space in the root partition/volume.

E.g. Commonly this could be excessive writing to /tmp, or other file system in /. The kernel will swap out anything it can (which isn't much) in an effort to store the unwritten memory in RAM buffers. Fairly quickly this will fail and everything grinds to a halt.

Normally you would get warning messages issued - but you may not see them for an especially storage-greedy process.