Google Earth Crashes Computer - Causes Hard Shutdown

I bought my laptop last year.  It exceeds the minimum
requirements:
P4 w/HT
3 Ghz
XP Pro SP2
512 MB DDR
64 MB Vid RAM

But Google earth crashes often, sometimes only a minute
after it has
started, sometimes I can go for several minutes.  I have
gone once
without a crash for a few hours.

It wouldn't be as bad if it didn't cause the complete lock
up/freeze/shut down of the computer.  I did an update the
other day, so
apparently the software is current.

Can anyone help?

First, try uninstalling and then reinstalling.

If that doesn't work, try changing the mode that Google
Earth runs in
to OpenGL or ActiveX (whichever one you don't have it
currently set
on).

This may also be a graphics card error, so try downloading
the latest
drivers for your graphics card.