Every now and then I'll be gaming or surfing w/e. And I'll get the error "generic host process for win32 has encountered an error and needs to close". I've looked up alot of related threads and some people say to do this or that in services and that its related to HP peripherals and its not. I have no HP hardware. Some people say the only way to fix it is to reinstall. Another guy said it was a DOS attack and ports 445 and 135 and needed to be blocked. I've tried all of this except for the port blocking. I just reformatted, which is why this doesn't make much sense. Anyway, upon getting the error message my connection to the net is killed and my taskbar goes gray. Then I get some message with a 60 sec timer before the machine restarts.

If anyone has some experience with this error and has a solution you'd make a lifesaver. Thanks.

P.S.: if anyone has a recommendation for free port blocking software, thanks again.
BWJ

Yea thanks for all the insight people. FYI, I configured an OS-external firewall and the error hasn't come back since.