Clicking on Background Tasks causes instant crash

Question

I posted earlier about my 2010 Mac Pro and in FCPX 10.0.6 if I click on the Background Task (just to left of time counter / timecode) I get an instant blue-screen for less than a half of a second and then I'm back to my desktop!  It's instantaneous!
When it happened I was inporting 1080p24 from my CF reader and I had asked checked "Optimize Media" so I wanted to check in and see the progress of the 5DmkII HD footage being encoded to Apple ProRes, but the crash was so fast - like catching the downhill edge on a snowboard... anyway, now when I boot up my Mac Pro, also a new issue - possibly related?!?!  - the fan is running louder than ever before - I think it is running wide opne full-blast!
What is happening to my faithful Mac Pro?  What is happeneing to FCPX??
FCPX 10.0.6
MacPro5,1 (2010 2.8GHz Quad Core)
OSX 10.6.8 (I'm on Lion because I need to keep FCP7 on for legacy freelance projects).
8GB 1066MHz RAM
note:  I've been stable for a long time now, and haven't loaded anything new including the most recent FCPX update tyhat came out last week; 10.0.7
Please help.
Thanks,
Stephen

Answer 1

Hello mrcart,
i think it is unlikely that firefox itself is causing an operating system crash, i had some time back an similar issue where a system of a friend of mine was crashing while using IE - thats the only app he used ... the system in his case had faulty ram, and i suspect you are facing some sort of hardware problem or faulty device driver.
Please read this (also lists steps what you can do):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc957625.aspx
(personally) I would suggest you start by checking your ram, you can do this in two ways:
Search in your Windows 7 Start Menu for "ram", you should find something like "Diagnose your computer´s memory problems"
... Or, you use the memtest86+ tool from here (e.g. download the iso, burn it and boot from the cd):
http://www.memtest.org/
Check your eventlog for errors (e.g. disk errors, timeouts, etc).
If you cannot track the problem down (i would suspect a hardware problem or faulty device driver ... e.g. it could be your video card driver doing something wrong) you should seek help at your computer manufacturer, an experienced friend, or using some forum.
kind regards,
John Kirk.