If you are having persistent freezing problems with a computer using Microsoft Vista, here's what I had to do to solve mine! I finally got PC World (from whom I bought a Packard Bell in late Dec 2007) to admit that Vista was causing this problem because my ISP was Virgin Media, and these two are not yet fully compatible. This was after heaven knows how many phone calls and 3 engineer call-outs to replace the mother board, memory sticks x2 and graphics card. Random freezing was reduced, (in the middle of word docs, for example) but the freezing minutes after going on-line persisted. I was losing sleep, time, money and my temper. After a forthright 40 mins, I got PC World to admit that every private customer now gets a machine with Vista, whether they want it or not, and this is only one of the many kinds of problems with Vista. They also admitted that even putting in a new hard drive (the only remaining thing that had not been tried), wouldn't fix it.

I told them I thought it was unethical to sell machines without a warning that anyone with Virgin Media would have this problem. Apparently this one is fixable, but even the man I was dealing with who works for PC World admitted it cost him £100 in engineers' fees to fix his.

I said I wanted a machine with Windows XP, and mentioned I was a journalist ( self employed). This seemed to shift them from their position that the only thing they could do for me as a private customer was to give me a refund or a different kind of computer (which would still have had Vista, and I would still have had Virgin!). Having given me a refund, they sent me sent over to the business section. Here's the crunch. The guy there said that most businesses, from smallest to largest, generally disliked Vista and were avoiding it 'en masse'. Apparently, such is the power of Microsoft that the only way to get yourself a new computer with Windows XP ( which is compatible with almost everything around) rather than continue to suffer with Vista, is to raise hell and declare yourself a 'business' - at least in that store. (I checked with several various  computer repair guys in other stores, and they agreed that this is the essence of the freezing problems.)

My own opinion now is that what many computer stores are doing is unethical. Likewise Virgin, and any other companies in the same situation. (They MUST know by now that if you have Vista, you will have freezing problems with them as an ISP! And as for Microsoft - they are just using private customers as guinea pigs to fix the umpteen things that are wrong with Vista by getting us to report problems. Who wanted it anyway?

Clearly, Virgin and the rest are  not going to budge to sort out compatibility with Vista until Microsoft gets its act together.

I haven't had a moment's trouble since I got a new machine with Windows XP as a business customer,  and how I wish I'd just kept my old one! Anyone got any more thoughts on this?