what can cause a game to crash

I have a vostro 1400 with 2gb of ram, c2d T7100 and 8400m gs graphics. Installed command and conquer 3, lowered the setting to low and native res, game ran very smoothly, when through 5 campaigns with no lag whats so ever. this moring i was lazy to get out of bed and played the game on my bed which means the bottom vents are partically blocked but the side vents are working properly. Played like that for 1 hour or so, then the game crashed at some graphiclly intensive points (more intensive than anything before) So the question is, the game crashed because of cooling? or the graphics card is unable to support some graphics? or is it so other hardware problem? btw, the graphics card driver is stock which came from dell

 

That's certainly not very wise thing to do, especially if you are doing something cpu/gpu intensive tasks, like gaming. It's basically asking for overheating and eventually system crash (and in the worst case, hardware failures).

 

It overheated most likely. You should only use the notebook on a hard, flat surface. Note that no manufacturer calls portable computers laptops anymore.

 

thank you guys for the help