Ford Focus: Stalling Focus 2000

I turned onto the on-ramp to get on the highway and the engine died
instantly. There was no coughing or hesitation, it just stopped.
I tried to restart it repeatedly, but didn't even get a click. It was
like trying
to start with it in gear.
There were some other symptoms. ALL of the lights normally come on when
you first turn on the ignition, but most of them go off after 1-2 second.
In this case they all stayed on and the odometer changed to "- - - - - " and
nothing else seemed to workx.
I pushed the car well off the road and started fiddling to try to start
it. It started immediately.
Since that was a dangerous situation, I took it in to the dealer. It
(of course ;>)
didn't act up while in the shop, but they did the fuel pump recall at no
charge.
In the week since, it has stalled twice. I was inching forward to back into
a parking
stall when it died last night. I tried several times to start it. By the
time I pushed it
into the stall, it was back to normal again and started repeatedly.
I was a bit dubious about the "fuel pump module" recall because of the
anomalies in the instrument panel displays.
I had an ignition switch problem about six months ago and ended up
having to
replace the steering column. Since that time (whether or not these are
connected)
I have had several other "instrument cluster incidents" which did not result
in
stalling. The glitches were associated with the radio suddenly going dead.
That
hardly qualifies as "life threatening", but again the problem soon "fixed
itself". There
was also an issue with the transponder keys not working intermittently.
Any ideas as to what the common factor is in all of these symptoms?

"DAVID HARRIS" <net> wrote in message
news:uLPce.3113$.. 

Sounds like low voltage situation. How new is the battery? When they get old
they can have loose plates or debris which can cause intermittent internal
shorts.