Interesting crash symptons: would like your help

[AceJupiter]

Greetings,

I have a not well-loved Compaq notebook with XPP. It crashes -- simply shuts down -- in a fascinating fashion under heavy load (i.e. many programs open).

Particularly when running greedy programs like Illustrator and DreamWeaver along with Media Player, I get this crash.

What happens is, after prolonged CPU spike and HD spinning associated with these programs, the Windows Fax Wizard pops up! It asks me to enter my location etc. When I try to cancel out, it just keeps popping up.

This is my cue to save my work (although trying to save at this point in Word produced only gibberish). Within one minute the machine will turn off -- as in lights out, not as in shutting down gracefully. There will be a brief moment where the screen is still on but the machine accepts no input, then it just turns itself off.

Thoughts? Thanks. ==ACE

 

[gbaughma]

Yeeeeeha! What a crash! <laugh>

Sounds like something totally mis-registered.... you may want to try reinstalling the apps (dreamweaver) so that it re-registers the associated DLL's.

Just a thought.

--Greg

 

[AceJupiter]

Greg,

The thing I may not have conveyed is that the machine will crash under any sustained load. The programs given were just examples.

I would posit that the CPU is throwing off too much heat for the machine to handle. Just why it would crash in this precise way is a subject of fascination to me.

I have tried immediately shutting down all apps, just to see what happens. It still crashes!

Ace