MS Vista issue

This is a body of really smart people that sit in front of XPand Vista everyday so I'm hoping that you can help me out.
I am having a particular problem with MS Vista (business edition)which I've read about on some other forums. It is really driving mecrazy and I'm wondering if any of you have found a solution to it.Here is my problem:

1) There are often times that programs will hang (true in XP also)in which I need to use the Task Manager to "kill" them (endprocess.) It seems that with Vista, this is not as effective as itwas in XP. For instance, I might have an IExplorer Browser windowthat freezes. Often times now in Vista, I use the Task Manager totry and kill the process and nothing happens - it just still sitsthere in the Task manger and in my Vista desktop. My only recourseis to do a hard-reset. I'm finding that I'm having to do this acouple of times a day now.

2) The second problem that I have, and I don't know if this is myDell M6400 laptop or Vista, is when I put it to sleep orhibernation, I come out of sleep and launch a program (like IE) andit just launches and hangs. Worst yet, I try to shutdown or restart- that hangs too. So that's one of the contributors to me having tohit the power button so frequently.

Any advice or help (please don't recommend installing betaWindows7) would be appreciated.
SolidworksAdministration