I have a fairly strange lock up problem with a Windows Vista Business installation. When I run a specific application, and only that application, the system freezes completely. I'm looking for advice on how to precisely identify and eliminate the issue.
Specific details of the symptoms and what I've tried so far:
The system is a Dell Latitude D630 with 2GB RAM, all drivers are up to date and the system is fully patched.
When it occurs the OS is completely frozen. Mouse and keyboard are unresponsive and any on screen activity ceases. Remote connections to the system fail. Pings timeout. The only way to get out of this is to hard power down the system. I've left it to see if it would time out but after more than an hour in the same state I decided that it wasn't likely to come back.
The problem is only caused by launching the VMWare VI Client. I use this system constantly and nothing else appears to trigger the problem. Running multiple apps attempting to stress the system isn't a problem. Very shortly after the VI client successfully authenticates to either an ESX\ESXi Host or a vCenter\Virtual Center server the system locks up. The precise stage at which it freezes varies slightly but it always succeeds in causing the problem. Completely uninstalling\reinstalling the VI 3 Client makes no difference and upgrading to the VI 4 Client makes no appreciable difference; the lockup timing is different but it still occurs. The same software on identical hardware with (as far as I can tell) an identical Vista Business installation does not suffer from the problem.
The event log entries that get recorded give no indication of any consistent or related activity that I can see, just an event log entry stating that the previous shut down was unexpected.
Edited to add
After some further testing I've established that the problem only occurs when I'm directly connected via a LAN connection to the network that the target VMware systems are on. If I'm connected remotely (ie tunnelled in via VPN over a wireless connection) the lock up does not happen. I'm not currently able to test if the problem does not occur if I'm just connected via a wireless network as I don't have a WLAN that directly routes to the systems in question.
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