I crashed my laptop three times

Being a fan of NASCAR, I have a computer game called NASCAR Racing 2003 Season. Even though it's 11 years old, it's still really popular because it works on newer versions of Windows and it's so modifiable (you can add older and newer cars and tracks to the game).

I have recorded videos of NR2003 with my camera, but I'm trying to find a way to record it with a screen recorder on my laptop, which is hard to do with a full-screen application due to the difference in resolution between the application and the desktop, where the recorder runs from. I decided to try out Bandicam, which I have a free version of. Although the free version of Bandicam puts a watermark at the top of videos and limits video length to 10 minutes, it records sound along with the screen, so I don't have to use Sound Recorder like I do with my primary recorder, CamStudio.

Next, I looked to see if there was a way to run NR2003 in a window within the desktop, rather than the standard full-screen setup. I clicked on the Graphics menu in the game and it brought up a window with a list of screen setups to choose from. Some of the setups did allow me to run the game in a window, so I chose one of those and clicked the "Run in window" box. The window was almost full-screen and my taskbar initially covered the very bottom of the window, but I was able to access the Bandicam controls and navigate through the NR2003 menus simultaneously.

I then selected the region of the screen for Bandicam to record, which was all but the window's title bar. After setting up and "driving" in the first few laps of a race in the game, I saved a replay of it, loaded the replay from the studio and put it in full screen for Bandicam to record. I was going to fast-forward to the end of the race to record it as the game showed it, but as I was doing that my laptop suddenly crashed, probably due to the unusual setup I had the game in. It actually turned off instead of just going back to Windows. So I restarted my laptop and went back to NR2003. I loaded the same replay and this time my laptop crashed during the first lap of the race.

So on my third try I decided to put NR2003 back in full-screen, standard resolution mode and run Bandicam "underneath" the game from my desktop. This meant I had to start recording before I launched NR2003 from my file manager. I started the replay and before the field even took the green flag, my laptop crashed again. I could not believe it. I gave up and decided that I will just have to keep recording replays with my camera from outside of my laptop. It may have been Bandicam and NR2003 running at the same time that kept causing my laptop to shut down completely, which means it could have been a processor issue caused by the programs. I ran NR2003 without Bandicam today and it worked fine, so I may be right. But anyhow, that's probably enough about my laptop troubles for tonight. :)