A stability detection program has identified that DrWatson is the program which crashes most on my computer. I understand this is some sort of error reporting, but do we need it - in other words, can it be safely disabled or deleted? What is it there for?

What program identified Dr. Watson as being the cause of computer crashes? It could be that some other fault is making Dr. Watson spring into life, so making it appear Dr. Watson is the problem when it is really something else. Does the computer crash?

You can disable and enable Dr. Watson by downloading the two Microsoft 'Fix it' files in this page. However, if the computer doesn't crash, then maybe don't worry about the message. The program identifying a problem with Dr. Watson has got it wrong (it happens).

About Dr. Watson

This is the problem with relying on commercial software.Very often one programme will identify another as causing a fault. Sometimes it's down to trying to persuade you to buy their software to fix a problem that doesn't really exist. As TW says, if it isn't broke, don't fix it. Do not be swayed to pay for something you don't need.

This is a program called Reimage and was quite expensive and it used to be that you could only run it once for the money but now allow one year's worth. My computer is getting a bit unstable now (it is old and due for replacement) and was freezing much more often and needing reboots to continue, so I ran the program which took about 45 minutes. It identifies what is causing instability etc and either repairs or replaces files. This identified Dr Watson as causing the most and also most recent crashes (mind you it said repairable, so perhaps it has repaired it now). Certainly the computer seems quicker and starts up without two or three goes. I see that Dr Watson can cause some people problems and wondered how necessary it was.

Dr. Watson seems not necessary unless you need a report on what is causing crashes. However, if Reimage is right and Dr. Watson itself is indeed causing crashes, then the function seems a bit self-defeating. Try disabling it to see if the crashes stop. Since the option to enable/disable it are provided by Microsoft (see link in my last post) it must be OK to do that.

Reimage gets mixed reviews but I notice cnet offers it as a download and that site is a reputable one.

I linked to the disable Fixit - I had previously thought you had to pay a visit to the registry to do the job (I don't like looking under the bonnet). So now have disabled and between the two repairs, hoping for fewer crashes. Many thanks.