How can I intentionally crash my lappy?

[rob]

On 12/20/2010 4:22 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Dec 2010 02:45:18 -0600, mechtheist wrote:
>
>> I am no programmer, but know the rudiments [the rudi'est of rudiments]
>> of working with Python.  I have a simple need,  to have a simple
>> script/app I can run that will crash my PC.  On my desktops, I can
>> always hit the reset, but that is not an option with my laptop.  Can
>> anyone tell me of an easy way to guarantee a program will instantly
>> kill/BSOD my windows7/64bit laptop?
>>
>> Any help is much appreciated.
> You realise that the operating system (yes, even Windows!) is designed to
> *not* crash no matter what the application does?
>
> (The OS may live up to that requirement imperfectly, but still, it tries.)
>
>
> You'll probably find that task easier from C than from Python. But if I
> were to attempt such a strange thing, I'd try to shut down some critical
> processes used by the OS. I'm not much of a Windows person, but if you
> call up the task manager (ctrl-alt-del) and inspect the process list,
> then find one that causes the machine to crash if you shut it down, you
> can probably do the same thing from a script.
Thank you, good approach ideas there.  Windows has gotten a lot better 
about crashing, but it is definitely still way the f 'imperfect'.  Now I 
just have to figure a way to make it imperfecter.