so on the rare occasion i do crash while playing new vegas. i get two different types of crashes, one kind i don't mind as much, (the kind that makes the game shutdown completly)

but the second kind of crash i do hate so much, thats the kind of crash where the game freezes when it crashes, and the only way to get the process and game to fully shutdown is to hit the power button on my computer tower.

i do save often, so when the game crashes and the process shuts down completly without locking up like that, i can quickly restart the game and load the latest save.

but when it crashes and makes it impossible to stop the process, that is very irritating and could possibly lead to software issues in windows.

so i need some help on trying to figure out how to prevent the freezing lockup type of crash, or recover from one without hitting the power button.
and yes ive tried ctrl alt delete to shutdown the process, but the game screen is locked so i can't see the task manager screen to shut down the process...

windows xp sp3
3 gigs ddr2 ram
geforce 9500gt 1 gig video memory
amd 64 bit dual core @ 2.7ghz 5200+

i also run the game through steam

This happens to me a lot too. However when the game freezes I don't reboot. All I do is hit CTL/ALT/DEL and then select Task Manager. From there I just kill (end task) the NV process. After doing that you'll have your desktop again. That's a whole lot quicker than hitting the power button.

As far as to why freezes happen, I haven't figured that out yet. I've played around with lots of settings and nothing seems to help. Its really annoying. I'm running Win7 x64, have loads of memory (16gb) and a fast processor (Intel Core i7-2700K) that's not really overclocked (just using the native Intel drivers to do variable CPU speeds and XMP with my memory). My video card is a GeForce gtx 580 running at stock speed at a 1920x1200 resolution. i've also tried downgrading the video quality from Ultra to High with no success. Frustrating!!

i think new vegas have problems with win7 thats all