Windows Vista Is Not RespondingError - The program has stopped working. Check online for a solution and close the program.

Want to now which software programs crash most often on your Windows Vista computer? There’s a secret command that will reveal it all.

Firefox 3 is fast but it frequently crashes when running on Windows Vista. And if you use Gmail IMAP with Outlook 2007 SP1, Windows Vista will freeze randomly especially when Outlook is downloading large messages from Gmail servers.

Same could be the story with other programs like Windows Movie Maker, Internet Explorer IE7, etc. While it is tough to diagnose the exact cause of a software crash, you can easily find out the names of software programs that have been causing maximum problems on your Windows Vista computer.

To create a report of such applications, open your Windows command prompt (or the Run dialog), and type - “perfmon /rel”  (without quotes). Press Enter.

Windows Vista will open the Reliability Monitor program. Go to the top right corner and choose “Select All” from the date drop down. Now expand the Application Failures group under “System Stability Report” and you are in for some pleasant surprises - it contains a detailed list of all software applications that have closed as a result of some error or failure.

Scroll this list and you will quickly get an idea of programs that crash, hang or freeze most frequently on your computer.

For me, it’s Firefox 3 and Microsoft Outlook 2007 that cause the maximum issue. I think the Outlook errors are connected to Gmail IMAP while Firefox 3 issues may have something to do with the DEP feature of Window Vista. See error message below:

“Firefox was closed. To help protect your computer, Data Execution Prevention DEP has closed Firefox”