Besides all of these suggestions.. you might first try playing world of warcraft for awhile without minimizing, and without running ventrillo or any other programs, to see if it still crashes:
My desktop PC had alot of crashing due to sound problems and what might be a power issue.
World of Warcraft's sound options menu is crap. It doesn't let you detect or set your soundcard or any extended options on your soundcard manually at all. It only allows you to check or uncheck the music and ambience, etc. I've seen DOS games with better sound options. I've also heard that Blizzard used a crappy compression method on the sounds. However, there is a fix for buggy sound in WoW that seems to help some people with sound issues -- setting the game to use windows multimedia as the sound output system, by editing the config.wtf file in the games WTF folder
Q u o t e:
Edit WTF\config.wtf and add
SET SoundOutputSystem "x"
Where x is one of the following possible values:
-1 = Auto select
1 = Windows Multimedia
2 = Direct Sound
3 = Aureal3D
4 = Open Sound System
5 = Enlightment Sound Daemon
6 = Alsa
7 = No Sound
8 = Xbox
9 = Playstation 2
10 = Mac Sound Manager
11 = Gamecube
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...mp=1#post17300
I'd also like to mention that the game's memory management doesn't seem to be that great. Its 'iffy' as it is, so any errors in your memory sticks will just make it crash more often. I would run a few memory testing utilities. These usually take hours to test your memory for errors. If your memory is faulty, I would return it or the entire laptop if necessary.
I would also try playing with the laptop elevated and maybe use an external fan on it, just to see if its an overheating issue.
Another thing to do is delete your warcraft temp folders WDB and WTF and restart the computer, and try the game again. Remember to try editing the config file again if necessary.
There is a "Repair.exe" in WoW's main folder. You can run this and it will compare your files vs the pristine ones on the internet server, replacing any that are corrupt.
Make sure all your drivers are up to date.
Try using a usb headset or usb soundcard and disabling the onboard soundcard -- to see if the soundcard is the culprit.
Try playing the game with the "ambience" turned off in the sound options. For some reason the bird's chirping in stormwind or the fire of a blazing brazier would crash my game almost every time on my desktop pc.
Turn off all window sound events in ControlPanel -> Sounds and Audio Devices -> Sounds. Set it to "none". Try this because you may have some kind of conflict with windows sounds, worldOfWarcraft sounds and your Ventrilo "colliding" sortof.
Try setting ventrillo to use the usb headset/soundcard. Also try setting to directsound, default device etc. See if one setting works better than the other. Close vent completely each time you change it and restart it to be safe.
World of Warcraft doesn't like being minimized on some computers. Try it without minimizing world of warcraft at all. Also launch Vent first, so that the memory is allocated to vent before world of warcraft takes the rest.
Try installing and running a program like " CCleaner " to delete all the temp files everwhere on your pc.
Try turning off powersaving/"allow windows to turn off to conserve power" features in the properties of your network card, harddrives and if its an option on your sound card properties. Also try turning off the powersaving options of the laptop/cpu in general.
I would also perhaps try uninstalling the game, defragging your harddrive, reinstalling the game, and reapplying the current patch.
