running out of memory ?

I have some structs with a few __int8 variables and a TCHAR[20]. When I try to create large numbers of these ( say 1000 or more ) the game hangs but lower numbers such as 500 work fine.
Each of these struct items is only 50 bytes so creating 1000 should only utilise 50Kb
Is there a way to test for lack of memory? My iPaq has a good amount of ram before running the game with just under 10Mb free for program and similar for storage.
I'm also trying to see if I'm just making a coding mistake somewhere and checking where it goes wrong in the debugger.
Each of these struct items is only 50 bytes so creating 1000 should only utilise 50Kb
Is there a way to test for lack of memory? My iPaq has a good amount of ram before running the game with just under 10Mb free for program and similar for storage.
I'm also trying to see if I'm just making a coding mistake somewhere and checking where it goes wrong in the debugger.