Something odd is happening with my laptop. I was watching a DVD, relaxing and expecting absolutely nothing to happen. All of a sudden, my laptop blacked out and turned off completely - without warning. The whole system was off. I turned it back on and it booted XP up, but then an BSOD appeared saying, "Unable to initalize video adaptor" or something. I restarted and then it finally booted back into XP and said that a serious system error has occured. Here's the information I found in the Event Viewer: Error code 000000b4, parameter1 84eee008, parameter2 850f2000, parameter3 84f46000, parameter4 00050000. So, now, I have two seperate problems. Why did the computer turn off so abruptly? If the system error occured, it would show the BSOD or even restart, but it just turned off, which is unusual. And, why did it show that video adaptor being unable to be initalized error? Perhaps I should remove and then reinstall my video drivers. I know I don't have viruses/spyware - I have all the protections I need, and automatic scanning turned on. Please help! Thanks! Another thing that might help - I have MS Virtual PC 2004, and XP Home Edition, but it usually works just fine... sometimes it crashes my whole system. I hate XP Home Edition! Thanks a TON! -Andrew

Event viewer might be a good place to start. Also see if you have a dump log. Look at the MS site for how to decode the dump log if exists. Seems odd about VPC. Again look at logs and might look at setting up a performance monitor.