You can fish around your Event Viewer, check to see what happens immediately before the error comes up.

thanks scott and whs.

@whs
i don't have my laptop at the moment, but i'll definitely give that a try.

when you said, "Next time the error occurs, start PE in a small window," do you mean after i reboot my computer? because when the error occurs, a blue screen appears (or is there a tweak to supress the blue screen?). i was able to make the blue screen stay displayed, i read it in one of the threads here.

@whs
thanks, as always, i bow to your technical expertise. ^_^
sorry, i thought stop errors and blue screen errors were the same thing.

ok, my next question to anyone, is there a way to supress a blue screen to be able to use Process Explorer?

thanks, mr geek. now i remember, that's where i got the info on how to be able to get the error. the other link you've given looks promising, thanks. ^_^

<edit>
now that i've realized i've mixed up my computer terms, can anyone please clarify what the difference is between a stop error and a blue screen error (BSOD)?

Here is how I understand the terms to be:
Stop Error/Blue Screen Error/Blue Screen of Death or BSOD all mean the same thing. The proper term is a "STOP Error". Some people who see it call it a "Blue Screen Error" as it's a blue screen with an error. It's usually called the Blue Screen of Death or BSOD as when a STOP error happens everything in Windows but the error display is shut down so it's your current session is over. In some cases if the error keeps happening when Windows boots the Windows install could be beyond repair and need a complete reinstall.
Windows does that for safety reasons. It would not be good to keep running if the error was caused by something like a RAM problem.
I try to call it "Blue Screen Error" on this forum as not all users will recognize the term "STOP Error".
I don't really like the term "Blue Screen of Death" as it sounds a bit hopeless like one it appears Windows is not going to work again but in most cases the problem can be fixed. Also a lot of people use it as a reason to blindly hate Windows when most of the time it's non-Microsoft drivers or hardware that cause the error and other Operating Systems have there own equivalents to a STOP error.
Though that is only the case for Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista.
In Windows 95/98/ME there were some cases where a Blue Screen error appeared and Windows shutdown for things that weren't really STOP errors.
In those cases it was a legitimate complaint against Windows but now a days with Windows XP/Vista the fault for the error is not normally a bug in Windows.