Okay, this has been going on for about a year now, on and off.

What happens is, if I need to browse my computer through a program (such as trying to open a file in paint) the program will stop responding, and never respond again.

Now, the part that frustrates me is there's no pattern to this. In Photoshop, I can open files perfectly fine. In Paint, until yesterday, I could open/save files perfectly fine. Now in Paint I can't save anything. Literally nothing I know of has changed from then 'til now.

If anyone has any information, please help me out.

Mmmm sounds like an explorer problem. Just repair install.

Explorer never stops responding, though.

Also I never got a Vista disk, so is there a download for a repair install somewhere?

No. Also it's Windows it doesn't always make sense. Repair install is the only thing I can think of.

Well there you have it I seem to be ♥♥♥♥.

http://www.linuxmint.com/
cough

Not gonna format got too much ♥♥♥♥ I don't want to reinstall/have to back up.

Which is why the only reason I'm installing 7 anytime soon is because I can install it over Vista.

Screenshot of error in action (via Paint, I tried to do file -> save):

>Vista
Well there's yer problem.

O LAZZZZZ VISTA IZ TEH DEVILZ NO CHUNZ UVV ENY FINK ELZZZZ BEEN TEH PROBLUM COZ VIZSTA HAET IZ KEEL RITE?

No actually Vista has a lot of legitimate bugs. Unfortunately, pretentious ♥♥♥♥♥♥s like you who assume they know ♥♥♥♥ about the Operating System see everyone jumping on the VISTA IS GARBAGE bandwagon trying to look smart jump to the other, less populated side. You're just as bad as the ones against it. There are quite a few security holes, the OS itself is unstable, no I am not in any referencing RAM hogging and I know you will bring it up if I don't address it here. Vista is garbage because it is garbage. Not because everyone around me says so.

Vista IS a RAM hog, but I've never had any problems with it, having myself 2 gigs.

Also, for the record:

With Paint, I stopped it from freezing by moving everything out of the folder, but it still does that with other programs indiscriminately.

Vista scales itself to the amount of RAM you have. just back your ♥♥♥♥ up and stop using a broken ♥♥♥♥ OS.

Like I said, I'm going to install Windows 7 RC as soon as I can, but I get an error when installing. >.>

RE
FOR
MAT

Sorry man but the only solutions I can think of are to: 1. Contact Microsoft(Ha), or 2. Take Pyro's suggestion and reformat that ♥♥♥♥♥.