I ran my first major hacking encounter this weekend, and the clever player decided to try to crash the security hacker's attack program.

So I dealt with it as I saw fit, but decided today to check the rules to see how it's meant to be done.

What I can't figure out is what it takes to get a crashed program running again. Just a complex action to load the program again? Or something more?

Well, I'm going to go by actual logic here and say that crashing a program is simply going to cause it to terminate (usually), so yes, reloading it is sufficient. In some cases it may cause the program to lock up, causing a reduction in performance (System rating) until it is unloaded.

Sounds about right. That's how I ran it, anyway.

Gives me ideas about specialized attack programs that cause additional problems when crashing programs. The program list needs some sprucing up.

Yeah, just a complex action to reload the program. And in the matrix, that complex action is pretty big...don't know too many hackers that really want to have to spend a complex during tense moments/action to just load a program...

I just dont understand how you can crash a TM's CF... It makes no sense considering it's a part of the TM's brain...