Your Windows OS seems to crash on you when running a HDD diagnostics. You can Run Seatools from a DOS bootable CD
SeaTools for DOS tutorial
A full test will take some time.
I am always a little cautious with Windows updates now and always keep an earlier system image that I have actually restored successfully.
thanks for the suggestion. the OS was crashing before I even began running any diagnostics. the only thing I could tie it to was that it seemed to happen when I hadn't been on the computer for some time.
I figured out the problem with the macrium boot disk. I made it using windows pe 3.1, which apparently didn't have the right drivers to recognize my two HDDs. this afternoon I made a new one using windows pe 4.0 and it worked like a charm. restored my image to exactly the one I made last august. since then I have been installing updates.
if I still have crashing problems after all this I may try your suggestion.
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