PC crashes are one of the sad realities of modern life, and it is a rare individual who never experiences one. Your computer may lock up and cease responding to input, flash up a colored screen with an error message, or simply lose power and die. It can leave you feeling totally helpless if you have no idea what caused it.
Equipment Failure Computer components do go bad sometimes, and when they do, a crash can result. Semiconductors can short out or simply break down. Individual sectors on a hard disk can fail, causing software to load improperly. Any part that fails without completely shutting the computer down can cause it to crash.
Buggy Software With the complexity of modern software, manufacturers are often pushed to meet deadlines. In their rush to get a new piece of software out on time, they may not do sufficient testing to uncover all the problems. At other times, manufacturers may not have adequately anticipated all the uses their customers will find for the software or what other programs customers may be using at the same time. These problems are called bugs, and it is a rare piece of new software that escapes without at least some of them crawling around. Manufacturers are in the habit of searching for bugs after a software release and issuing fixes for them then.