I really would like to know if it was caused by an external agent.
Back in '98, as a novice, Windows 95 cost me about $5000 trying to get it to run more than 30 minutes without crashing. It was not a loss as I wound up with three PCs and a bit of an education about Windows. Windows 98 fixed that problem for me. Then Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000 Professional, and now XP. I like W2K and XP very much, but I have missed getting frustrated using systems that VERY rarely gives me a problem so I ordered Mandrake 9.0 to have something to raise my frustration level back up to a healthy position. ;-)