Try increasing the default memory allocated to the virtual machine.
If you are using JBuilder, edit the Project Properties dialog, and select the "Run" tab.
On the VM Parameters line, add
-mx512m
this will increase the memory available to slightly more than 512 m. Hopefully you have enough ram/swap space to do this. the -mx XXX m switch is a general jvm switch to handle memory.
(lack of available memory on your machine may really be the problem. If you are on windows, check the task manager, on unix use top)