I never saw it coming. Turns out the problems involving my system crash had NOTHING to do whatsoever with drivers, OS, memory sticks, hard drives, outside fan vents, burnt out CPU, or even Daddy Papersurfer.
Although he did cause a bit of a stink with references to whifferball droppings.
The culprit lay deeper inside the case. I've had this box since 2003, and it's served me well.
I ended up having to dig underneath some
cabinet hardware to get some needlenose pliers to do it safely, but it ended up being lint and dust buildup underneath the CPU fan I never thought of checking. Once I pulled the fan; after carefully unscrewing the retaining screwes that actually 'dig in' between the heat sink fins; I flipped the puppy over in my hand and thought I was looking at a dust cover.
It was a third of an inch thick felt mat, blocking air from circulating.
While my BIOS relates RPM of the fan over the CPU chip and gives a temperature reading that never went much over 52C, the computer was shutting down when the processes caused it to quickly heat. I'm not sure if it 'halts' the system if it reads too quick of a jump, because the CPU never got to a point of actually heating anywhere to the point it'd be damaging...luckily.
Anyways, I'm back up, all my applications are up except my PDA being synced, and I'm happy again with my two monitors.
I hate working with one monitor...can't read and type with horizontally stacking applications on one screen.
Just remember...if you end up having MAJOR restarts on a computer that's 3 years or older, keep this in mind before having to go through the mess I did over the last two weeks. If you don't feel comfortable cleaning under your PC's parts and taking them apart, DON'T! Get someone who you trust with your life to do it.
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