Need help with the "Erase Free Space" disk utility

When I use Disk Utilities to Erase Free Space (I use the single zero mode) I get a message telling me,
"Your Startup Disk is almost Full,
you need to make more space available
on your startup disk by deleting files."
This occurs about 90% of the way through the process (based on where the blue bar is at the time) during the "Creating Temporary File" portion of the process. I know from past experience that I will remain in this portion of the process forever unless I press the "Skip" button to complete the process.
My questions,
1. What is the startup disk and why is it full?
2. What should I do about the Your Startup Disk is Almost Full warning?
3. Is my computer actually talking about "regular" disk space (I currently have about 9GB of 80GB free but have seen this warning with 30GB available as well).
4. When I press "Skip" and the blue bar continues to complete the process, have I actually erased free space?
PBG4 15" 80GB HD 1GB RAM   Mac OS X (10.4)  

The Disk Utility does the erase by creating large temporary files, writing to them, then deleting them. While doing this, OSX may notice the lack of free space on the disk. This is normal, but could cause problems if you are also running some applications that want some disk space. If you let if finish, it should delete the temporary files and free the disk space.
I prefer to run the Disk Utility from the Tiger install disk when doing a Verify, Repair, or Erase Free Space on my boot disk, so I know I won't be interfering with anything running.

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