Recovering from a serious error....

[jq]

Yeah so my computer has been doing something really funny lately. I will be listening to music or scanning the computer viruses or something BESIDES the internet (running a program that is constantly running) and the strangest little thing happens-- my computer shut off and restarts without warning! This doesn't happen EVERY time, just some of the time, like 1-3 times a day. It has happened 1/3 of the time that I scan the computer for viruses/malware etc, regardless of the program, and happened once so far when I was just listening to music.

Then when it starts back up I get a message that says "your computer has just recovered from a serious error," and then I get the option of sending it to msft. Whoop dee doo.

Its strange because this never happened to me before that I can remember. But I did remember having a lot of weird problems when I had spyware doctor back in the day (which is why I cancelled it even though I loooooved it.) And it is worth noting that with the newest version of spyware doctor, I couldn't even get my comptuer to run without restarting OVER AND OVER AGAIN! (Until hitting F5 like 100 times and going to the advanced options in startup.)

So my conclusion is it is PROBABLY spyware doctor and that fact that it is always running in the background, hard to say. I put it on a flash drive so I could still do scans when I want (because it seriously does have badass detections) without it intruding on my operating system. Hopefully that will put an end to my problems.

I also rolled back my windows media player. HEre's why I upgraded-- I wanted to be able to compress things in "Windows Media Audio Pro" which is supposed to be WAY better than normal WMA. Supposed to be more advanced, and do a way better job at compression etc. The reality is. however, that NOTHING PLAYS IT ANYWAY, so screw it. Turns out my MP3 player, which is fairly new, can't play it, and I spoke with a friend who's MP3 player also can't play it. So, needless to say, there is no need to use the newest WMP which is a total data hog anyway and forces you to install URGE.

So I got rid of URGE, rolled back my WMP, and uninstalled SPyware doctor, here is to hoping that will be the end of my computer "serious error".

Wondering if anybody else has experienced this sort of random shutoff before?

[Kizzume]

How old is your hard drive? Has your computer EVER made a CLICK sound before it crashes?

[jq]

About 4-5 years I think now. Nope, no clicking sound that I am AWARE of anyway, is it something I could easily hear? Anyway, it is worth noting that so far since I uninstalled those programs the comptuer has been running GREAT. I really think it was the spyware doctor that was doing it. I remember having really peculiar problems with it before.

[Kizzume]

Still though--you might want to check out a registry cleaner, like the one in TuneUp Utilities.

As far as that click sound--it depends on how loud you can hear the hard drive already. If you never notice the sound of the hard drive normally, you MIGHT not notice the click, but if you do, you should have noticed it.

If it does a click sound, then about 10 seconds later you get a bluescreen or a restart, that's an indication of the hard drive crashing.