I haven't yet found a definitive reason why a Lazarus program of mine would on rare occasions crash the computer it was on but I'm still looking into it. I don't now think it was due to a space being in the path to the program but in case anyone is interested there have been some developments.
The program detects what Windows version is being used so I made some changes and now whenever it's run for the first time it will prompt the user to run it in compatibility mode for WindowsXP SP3 if the operating system being used isn't WindowsXP or Windows7. It goes on to give instructions for doing that and for disabling the annoying Windows UAC prompt that shows up when the program is run just like with other unregistered programs that don't have a signature certificate.
Of course, disabling that UAC prompt means that it's disabled for ALL programs but the user is warned about that. Some folks say that it's impossible to disable that prompt for an individual program instead of all programs but others say it can be done if some complicated steps are taken.
The program has been tested on WindowsXP, Windows7 and Windows10. When it's run in compatibility mode I noticed that its appearance changed slightly in an appealing way and it seems to run just fine that way.
I did some research on the differences between WindowsXP and Windows7 and found out that Windows7 has a better GUI interface among other things but I hope that they're similar in important ways and that I'm on the right track about this. The program was tested on Windows7 but not nearly as much as on WindowsXP and Windows10. I can only assume that it will work on others.
This program has never had this problem on WindowsXP.
Until I can make a definite determination about why the crash happened then this is the way things will be.
The event logs indicate that the program became unresponsive before the crash happened but this may be a bit misleading. I don't know what the true chain of events were leading to the crash but I've never before seen an unresponsive program cause one of the worse crashes that can occur. It looked like it was working fine and continuously right up to the moment of the crash.
I'm currently putting the program through extensive shakedown runs to see if it holds up okay while in compatibility mode and I hope that it doesn't crash. If it does then I'll be floored.
This program is a video editor, movie-maker, cropper and splicer. It can be downloaded from:
https://od.lk/f/NDJfMTM3NDQ0OV8 A file that contains instructions and a log of all corrections and changes can be downloaded from:
https://od.lk/d/NDJfMjM2MDM4MV8/readme.rtf The program is named VirtualU. Best wishes and all praise to Lazarus.