Odd stop error

OK, so today after mom gets done with Pogo for over 9000 hours this morning, I get a chance to do some shtuff. What I wanted to do right off is make a copy of an audio CD a friend burned for me because one of my CD players can't see the disk and read it. So I proceed to do something that I usually don't expect to work. After the 'puter has been on for a while, the CD burner drive usually doesn't respond - it usually requires shutting down the desktop and turning it back on. I have been of the habit to do exactly that or at least if I'm burning a CD, I'm going to do it within an hour after the desktop boots up.

I push the eject button and it surprises me by responding. Oh. whoah. Didn't expect that. I usually test the system that way. Should have restarted it anyway, but no. I load the burner software, have it read what I want off the disk, and then burn the copy. Whole new, not an exact copy, but read the old one and burn a completely new one. Then it's done in about 2 minutes.

Then I go... and put the CD back in because for some reason, I wanted to play the disk. The desktop goes and recognizes it. And then as I fiddle with some things, suddenly the screen goes black, the tower makes a little click noise, and XP tosses up a blue stop error screen. IQR is not less or equal, yadda yadda.

I'm like OH SH---- ! What the hell? So I check upstairs, the TV up there is still on. Last time there was any unusual behavior of devices was a few months ago. My TV did something, shut off and came back on, but the computer monitor went out and needed turned off and back on and it was OK. Yesterday my TV shut off at some point, I don't know when, but it was off. I had left it on, with the blue screen from the VCR lighting it up. I know the Toshiba has some dust issues. I had to fight with it last night, banging on the side to get it to decide to stay on.

I don't know if the Toshiba had one of those occurences where it affected the 'puter downstairs, or if it had to do with the CD burner being used when I should have shut off and restarted the system. OR WHAT. I don't KNOW. I hate that. We depend on this thing. It's barely 4 years old. I have a backup of the drive and the install.

I don't handle this right, and I don't want this episode to make mom think she gets a chance to buy the laptop she doesn't need.

But at any rate, when that error occurred, I pushed the power button and it shut off, then I restarted it and it came up as you can see by this post. Some sort of Kernel Error registry key popped up, so if there's a problem, some pages suggested probably a RAM error, which for all intents and purposes, could be so. I mean, I've never opened this thing up to clean out the dust - I probably should. I have this tendency to leave things alone when they work, especially when I depend on them. It's an Asperger's trait of mine, likely.