Fatal error and the site blows up after adding a new imagefield to a content type - help needed!

I added new imagefield to a content type, and the site blew up with this error:

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 32505856) (tried to allocate 3296135 bytes) in /home/sites/actionspace.org/public_html/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 400

This is the second site that I've made that this has happened to, and I haven't been able to fix it. On the other site, I just ripped out all the imagefield stuff and started again. I can't do it with this site as there is far too much content. And it should have been going live today.

Answers to questions:

1. CCK version – 5.x-1.9
2. imagefield version – 5.x-2.1
3. permissions for your tmp and files directory – don't know about tmp, but files is rwxrwxr-x
4. download method (public or private files) – dont know
5. imagefield configuration - can't tell, site doesn't work
6. expected results – a new imagefield added to a content type
7. the unexpected actual results - entire site goes down with a fatal error
8. Steps to reproduce the problem - 1. Add a new imagefield content type. 2. There is no step 2