I'm a long-time and happy DNS user who just switched to 11.5.  I started using it heavily for the first time yesterday and my computer, which is normally very stable, crashed twice.  I'm wondering if DNS is the culprit.

The crash comes instantly: the computer is working and suddenly the system shuts down and the screen goes black.  After the first crash I did a little research and saw that on some systems one can try renaming the dnsspserver.exe file.  I did that but after a while the system crashed a second time.

Norton Security is running and reporting no problems.

I'm running a ThinkPad with an Intel i5 CPU M 540 @ 2.53 GHz, 8 GB installed RAM, Windows 7 Professional with Service Pack 1, 64-bit. 454 GB Hard Disk with 193 GB used.

DNS Premium 11.5.

 Any suggestions would be really appreciated!

 Thanks.

Phil

P.S. Just edited my old signature: I'm running DNS Premium 11.5, Windows 7, SP1, Revolabs xTag Mike

Phil,

the reason for this could be as simple as a defective RAM stick. I have had this in the past, and it took me very long to detect, searching in all kinds of directions, although it turned out as fairly easy in the end. If, for instance, you have two memory sticks currently in use, remove one of them for a while, and then do the same with just the other one in use.

In my case, I could use the system quite happily for a few days running on just one stick, although being bogged down for obvious reasons until I restarted, but there was no crash any longer. Then, after rotating the sticks, and using just the other one, the system crashed within the first five or ten minutes after launching it, and this happened over and over again. So it was obvious that it was the second RAM stick which was the culprit, and not DNS, being merely the catalyst in here.

I guess it was Lindsay Adam (monkey8) who explained to me how to do it, so all credit goes to Lindsay for that one.

Rüdiger

Well, it's past the point where we can make any changes in the code, but we can still make changes to the Easter Egg!

Click KB 2012 REV D to Download a 30 Day Evaluation of KnowBrainer 2012 

Thanks very much, Rüdiger and Lunis.  So at least two possible causes are Symantec and memory issues.  That's a good start.

Today I've been much more careful not to have too much running in the background in order to conserve memory.  The memory window of Task Manager has been showing between 2.5 and 3 GB memory.  That's with Outlook mail, calendar, and several instances of Word running and lots and lots of editing.  I've been using the system all day and, so far, no crashes.  

If that does the trick I'll live with managing my open programs more carefully.  If not, I'll try Rüdiger's and Lunis's fixes.

 Thanks again for your help.  I hope this exchange is of use to others.