My Vista laptop freezes consistently whenever I turn on the wireless networking. Its perfectly stable when using wired LAN or a USB 3G modem, but cold-freezes when using Wifi. 

I've being considering upgrading to Win7 anyway and thought that reinstalling the networking stack might fix the issues, but if it's a hardware fault that will just be a waste of time and waste of a Windows license. 

I've looked thru the Event Viewer and checked for other error traces but can't find any clues to help track it down. It seems more likely that a cold freeze is due to a hardware issue than software, is that true? 

**==EDIT==**
The laptop is a Toshiba A200 with an Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Wifi driver on version 11.5.0.32.