Mulling over my computer's panic attacks

My little Mac Mini is getting a bit long in the tooth. Since I loaded several hundred holiday photos and lots of other new stuff this month it has suffered three or four kernel panic attacks. (Don't ask.) The screen dims, a warning message in several languages sits in the middle of the screen and I have to force shut down.

This latest one on Thursday was while I was adding photos to Lightroom and the crash completely zapped Lightroom. On restart everything had disappeared! Argh.

This walk with family on Oare Marshes was while I was still mulling over how to solve the problem, so I was a bit 'elsewhere' in my head.

Thank the lucky stars for Time Machine. When I got back I replaced the Lightroom preferences file with a backup from a couple of days before... and all was restored.