Okay, so, here's the problem. I can be doing any task. Typing something up, instant messenging, playing a game. And randomly, my computer will completely freeze. Most of the time, a bunch of colors, like little snippets of an image or something I'm looking at will suddenly fly all over the place making a static picture that looks something like a magic-eye, or whatever those things used to be called, but the last time it happened the image on the screen stayed the same as it was and it all just froze. After this happens, if someone has been messaging me or something, I can still hear the audio, but nothing I do, CTRL+ALT+DEL, Alt+tab, ect, will fix it, and my only option then is a hard reboot. This is especially troubling to me because I just got this laptop in June, and I've never had this sort of trouble with the laptop I bought two years ago. That computer ran Windows XP, and nothing like this ever happened, so I'm thinking, is this something that has to do with Vista? ... Even if it isn't, does anyone know how to solve this problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Is the laptop still under warranty ? You could try updating the drivers for the video card, though it sounds more like a hardware problem.

Have you run the memory test in the Control Panel? Would be good to eliminate this as a cause. You can also try setting your paging file size larger in System Properties > Advanced > Settings > Advanced. Not as likely, but ... Memory seems most likely. Do you check and optimize your registry. Ccleaner is a good freebie. Not as likely a cause but ... Have you looked in the Performance Information in the Control panel. It reports possible conflicts and system/program problems. It includes links to solutions where it can. Just some random thoughts. For what they are worth. Web Developer