So I'm getting a slightly strange error and wondered if the lovely people of GoG might be able to shed some light.

I've been playing Civ 5 (on Steam bleugh!) and the game runs fine while actually playing, even for hours at a time. But sometimes, after closing the game, I get a BSOD error and the computer restarts. I quick search around online suggests that it is a somewhat common problem to get BSOD errors while playing Civ 5, especially on higher graphic settings, but the common consensus is that it's an over heating problem due to everything going on in the game, so I don't see how crashing only when the game is closed could be the same problem...

So far it's only happened after closing the game, and I think it's only Civ 5 (although to be fair this is the only modern game I have that would push my laptop). It's not a huge problem, because it happens after closing, but I would still like to prevent it if possible.

Computer hardware has never been my strong point, so I could be entirely wrong and it is just down to some kind of overheating.

Anyway, I'm on a Dell Inspiron laptop, Windows 7 64 bit, Intel Pentium Dual Core T4500, 4GB Ram, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4300 Series.

I've played copious Civ5 and I've played it on some pretty chintzy machines and I have never had a BSOD, heck I have never even seen a BSOD in Win7.

Those are usually caused by critical hardware errors, overheating being one of them like you suggested. really go through your device manager and make sure your drivers are up to date on all your components and utilize a hardware monitoring tool, speccy is oft suggested.

also a defrag and disk check never hurts

edit: I noticed you're playing on a lappy, make doubly sure that guy is getting more than adequate ventilation. If you've had it for a while, take a vacuum and with a brush/ edge tool attachment clean the crud from your heat exhaust vents. You can try reducing the settings or throttling your hardware if nothing else.

Blue screens come with their own stop codes, so googling them can give you an idea of what's the cause of the BSoD. If your computer doesn't automatically reboot on blue screens, you should be getting an image similar to this. The marked areas are the ones that show you the reason for the bluescreen.
If your computer doesn't give you enough time to read them, when logging back in you should have the "Windows encountered an unknown error and restarted" dialog. Click more info and look for the bccode.

There are many different things that might cause a BSOD, but the most likely ones are that you either have issues with some drivers or your hardware.

Laptop temp or RAM not being freed. Lower graphical settings.

First up, apologies if I double post and for typos as Im on my phone.

I tried to follow Windows debugging procedure, but (maybe unsurprisingly) the windows debugging tool wouldn't install.

I'll root out the actual error code and see what I can find.

I always make sure the vents are clear and the laptop's not too hot as I used to have one that overheated and died regularly. But I'll definitely give it a hoover.

Drivers are a little more complicated... Windows doesn't like my graphics card drivers as they are unsigned so I already have a work around jusy to get them to work. I'll check they are all up to date though.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm away for a couple of days but will try them all when I come back.