Why does my Computer keep crashing

Question

Ok...New to this whole video editing deal. Thought it would be a cool thing to get Adobe Premiere 7.0 and use it to create some video movies of the family to post on facebook or whereever. Not there at all. I want to know if someone can give me a clue as to why my system automatically restarts when I open or try to open the Premiere program. I have an HP Pavilian with a Pentium D 3.00ghz processor w/ 1.5 GB of RAM.
I installed the software fine and restarted the computer after the installation. The Norton Anti Virus was disabled. I click the icon to open the program and it runs for about 30 seconds and then BAM, my computer shuts down and restarts automatically.
My guess is the program is too large and when my system runs out of memory it quits and goes to sleep hence the restart. But if that is not it, can somebody help my work around this issue. Do I need more RAM? A larger processor? A new computer? Not sure of what the next step is here. I have been reading some post and people talk about this other program that is a rival to PE called Vegas. I am interested but I am not sure at this point if I will have the same issues. What do you think? I am really interested to know.....

Answer 1

Brownrod,
No, though Task Manager will tell you what is going on at the moment. It is good for monitoring the Processes and Performance of the computer, in real time.
In C:\Windows\System32\ you will find Event Viewer (eventvwr.exe, in XP-Pro). It is a logging application, that keeps tabs on the system, and logs all events, whether they are errors, or not. It is a tabbed viewer, and the two most important tabs are System and Applications. I can't recall what one needs to do to access it from within Windows, because when I get a new computer, one of the first things that I do is place a shortcut to it on my Desktop. Then, I can access it with just a Dbl-click. I do the same for Control Panel.
Each time that you bootup, start/end a program, and shut down, it logs events. Most of these events will have a little "bubble" icon with an "i" in it. The ones that you want to study will be yellow triangles with a "!," and red circles with an "X." You'll get messages like this:
"Hanging application Photoshop.exe, version 9.0.2.0, hang module hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp."
In that case, you also have a link to MS's Knowledgebase. Those can usually provide some clue, as to what went wrong, though not always. Still, they are better than nothing. Unfortunately, some of the messages are so cryptic that even a senior coder for MS cannot tell you what happened. However, you might get lucky and find some good, useful info.
Then, there is always "The Case of the Unexplained,"
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/spotlight/sessionh.aspx?videoid=722
Good luck,
Hunt