I develop using Java 5 and 6 on Intellij IDEA 7 and 9M1. From time to time (during run/compile) my Mac (10.5.7) will die with a Bluescreen of death.
Has anybody else had this issue and somehow managed to solve it? If so, how? Any suggestions other than running the IDE in a VM?
It could be specific to your hardware and/or software environment. I'd suggest performing a hardware test (faulty memory is the most likely cause). Java is a stress to the system, I've seen such situations before (other applications work fine, but Java is causing system crashes, in most cases such problems were related to memory, replacing the modules fixed them). For testing the memory you can use the Memtest OS X.
Another thing to try is Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 5 Developer Preview which is available via Apple Developer Connection.