Something weird happened.

Today I accidentally knocked over my keyboard (my cat was on the desk and I was trying to get him off) and it landed keys-down. Immediately, the mobo beeped once and explorer.exe disappeared, and it wouldn't let me into the task manager to re-open it, and I had to hit the reset button.

Any idea what happened here?

p.s. the keyboard was still on -- I hit the caps lock key to see if it was plugged in.

 

My best guess is that the PS/2 or USB jack temporarily came slightly loose. On older computers I've seen PS/2 chips get friend as a result of this, but I've never seen it happen on a newer computer. I've also seen computers shut themselves down b/c a usb device shorted out the port, and I've seen the same problem fry motherboards. But usually the ports on the back of the PC are strong enough to prevent this from happening.