Each time I run Microsoft Word on my Windows PC these days, when I close the program, the machine stutters a bit, then delivers a glum message:

"WINWORD caused a General Protection Fault in module WINWORD.EXE at 00B6:0408."

Crash! Another victim of the dreaded Windows GPF. Sometimes, my mind on idle while my PC reboots, I stare at those initials and reassign them:

Godawful Poor Functioning.
Garbage Production Facility.
Going Putrid Fast.
Gates Programming Fuckup!

I know that Bill Gates isn't personally to blame for the ill manners of my Microsoft Word. But holding him responsible provides a grim kind of satisfaction. By dint of his astonishing success and unfathomable wealth, Gates' features have become the face of the computer revolution -- big glasses, mussy hair and all. When something goes wrong on the desktop, his is the face we want to throw a pie at, festoon with a mustache or, when things get really bad, punch.

In truth, lately Word's GPFs have turned relatively harmless -- they send me an error message but don't freeze my system. And so I have not bothered to spend the hours I know it would take to identify and exterminate this bug. I do not wish to venture out into Windows' maddening system directories, with their vast arrays of incomprehensible filenames; I do not wish to disturb things I never knew existed in hopes of solving problems I never expected to have.

Yet the error messages are disquieting. They are little missives from the depths of my PC that declare, "This system has become too complex for you to even think about fixing. You are no longer in control."

That is an ironic message to receive from Microsoft Word, because the myth of total control is what Gates, his company and his new book of high-tech crystal-ball-gazing, "The Road Ahead," are all about.