Since Windows Vista seems to be locking up on you. What are the specs of your computer? Vista Home 32 or 64 bit? How much ram?
Depending on both of those answers, may need to change Vista's theme to Classic theme and even change the start menu to the classic menu. So it looks like it's a Win 9x OS. Vista is notoriously resource hog. I had all kinds of issues with the 64 bit version with low resources. Since I run the 32 bit version in a VM with maxed out ram, no issues at all, in fact quite stable even with running Aero.
Another thing that might help is to remove non essential startup programs using MSConfig (not really what it was designed for (permanently disable startup programs), but it works for this).
This may not be the solution, but whenever someone is running Vista and having freezes, I suggest this first. I liked Vista over XP (still do, I hated XP with a passion), but it is a resource hog.