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Ernest makes a very valid point. Running out of memory is the biggest culprit when your machine freezes for no reason. I jumped in when the prices were at the bottom and bumped my machine to 512M. Still, I find myself rebooting quite regularly. I work in IT when I'm not on FR. We tell all our users, "Don't call MIS until you've restarted your computer." Obviously, can't be sure without knowing what all is running, and seeing it happen, but it sounds more like memory starvation than a bug.
You would be surprised how many programs run in Windows without your knowledge. A look at Start|Run|MSCONFIG will give you an idea. Assuming you sorta know your way around your computer AND have a good backup, you can use MSCONFIG to turn off some of this stuff to free up a starved machine. But please, backup up your data and know what you're turning off.

You would be surprised how many programs run in Windows without your knowledge.

This is true. In the past I always had Microsoft Messenger start up with Windows. Even when I would sign out, but leave the icon in the taskbar I noticed through ZoneAlarm messenger was still uploading. This of course is using memory even though the program was turned off. Now I completely shut it down; after I check my e-mail I exit the program.

Still I wondered, what information could have been getting uploaded to Microsoft? It's not that I'm paranoid or anything about it, but it just seemed strange.