A Fatal Error That Caused My Computer To Reboot

[Captain Jean-Luc Picard]

I was reading my email in Outlook Express while I was listening to streaming
audio of a major league baseball game when all of a sudden for no apparent
reason my computer shut off and rebooted. When I got back in to Windows XP
Professional Edition, I got a message from my system which stated that my
computer had recovered from a fatal system error.

I clicked on the box which sent a report on the error to Microsoft and the
Microsoft web site came back and said that a device driver installed on my
system caused the problem but that the precise cause of the problem could
not be determined. I then went into my AVG Antivirus 6.0 Free Edition,
installed the most recent update which came out today and then ran a full
virus scan of my hard drive which is partitioned into C, D, and E drives. No
virus was detected during the scan which took nine minutes to run.

Today, I downloaded a critical update from the Windows Update web site.
Could that have caused a glitch on my computer?

Since I have had Windows XP Professional Edition on my computer, I have
never had my computer shut off and reboot like this? What could have
happened?

 

[Jose Francisco]

Greetings Captain Jean-Luc Picard,

I don't really know the cause of this problem. If you have installed any
hardware lately try getting the latest drivers from the hardware's website.

Also try running a Windows Update regular and more often.

I doubt an update can cause your computer to crash and automatically
reboot.

Good Luck.

Regards,
Jose Francisco

 

[Captain Jean-Luc Picard]

The odd thing is that I haven't installed any new hardware lately.

Ever since my computer shut off and rebooted, it has worked fine. I am
curious as to what happened to cause my computer to shut off and reboot.