black screen with a frozen cursor

Hey gang!

I think I already know the answer to this one but I want to double check.

My friend has a Vista Home Premium that occasionally (once a week) will freeze with a black screen and the cursor will not move.

She has some loaded 3rd party software like cute cursors and what not and google stuff.

Now when it will begin to crash she will be working on a document or some web stuff through firefox and first this is that her cursor will fail to click on document or whatever she wants to click on, then she closes the document or window, reopens sometimes she is able to click however she gets a black screen with a frozen cursor.

Only way out of it is to hard boot the machine. goes through the normal boot process then acts normal.

There are 2 options:

1) Unload the 3rd part software ad try to determine who and what is causing the problem.

2) Do a repair.

She does not have a boot disk but a her restore files are on her D drive.

I could make a disk from those and then attempt to repair.

Thoughts?
Feelings?
Alternatives?

Thanks gang!

If she's able to get into Windows the "cure" is to update ALL drivers to the latest available version (this includes any programs that install drivers also) - then ensure that you have all available Windows Updates.

If this doesn't fix it, then it's time to get a set of recovery disks from the manufacturer of the system.
Then backup the data, wipe the drive with DBAN/KillDisk (both are free), and then use the recovery disks to reinstall Windows.

Good luck!