opening a jqueryUI (1.10.4) dialog often crashes my PC (fedora 22)

opening a jqueryUI (1.10.4) dialog often crashes my PC (fedora 22)

i've added a dialog popup box to my website and am finding that there is now a 50/50 chance that when i click on the button to open the dialog, my entire laptop will freeze and reboot!
my site is based on the elgg framework (elgg.org) and i am using elgg 1.12.4 presently.
i have removed all of the content from the popup, just to see if that helps, but it doesn't.
i haven't seen anyone complaining of anything similar online yet either.. so for now i am stuck.
anyone know what the issue might be?
i can't upgrade to 1.11.x because it is not tested with the other components in elgg and indeed, when i did just test 1.11.x on my site, other issues were noted as a result.
thanks