My computer suddenly shut off on me, point at me and laugh

O8)

Maybe it's spyware/adware.

sometimes it's because it thinks the processor is overheating and the thermal cutout cuts out.

Usually, though, it's because there's some nasty, vile, incredibly fucked up "feature" in Compaq's version of Win98 that chokes when handling certain large files.

It's only on the Compaq version. I have another drive with a jen-yoo-wine Microsoft Win98 from a clean, paid for, MS CD and it runs better than I could hope. Never crashes, uses half the memory when booted, and runs much faster than the Compaq system-- even on the same hardware.

I have no love lost for Windoze, but I suspect at least half the complaints are due to vendors' versions of Windoze. Dell, Compaq, HP, eMachines... they all "improve" it.

My XP PC used to randomly shutdown about ever other day. A royal pain in the ass - especially if you're in the middle of a Word doc or something. I have a Compaq Presario that I used the free Compaq upgrade from ME to XP years ago. Someone mentioned that it was a Compaq issue; well, I thought it was a heat issue so I cleaned the inside then kept the cabinet door open and had a small external fan to keep the heat down. Yet, it still shutdown periodically.

I did some research and most said it was heat related. I don't buy these theories:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320299
http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=5188
http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread/t-7208.html

I think it is from adware/spyware/virus doing nasty things. Here's how I arrived at that conclusion. I have Norton Internet Security (NIS) and when I did a complete computer scan I'd end up with a dozen or so infected files that would get 'delete failed' when NIS tried to delete them. (My kids were loading various free packages off the Internets and so I'd go back remove these and clean up.) I'd ignore the delete failed files and just assume if NIS can't delete them then the heck with them. I was getting random shutdowns at this time. I finally realized that these files were in use and, hence, unable to be deleted. If I booted up in safe mode or stopped the processes for the bad .exe files then I could delete them manually myself. All of the bad files were adware or spyware and ever since I have made a habit of making sure these files were deleted I have had zero random shutdowns.