Sometimes when I work in Maya, the program freezes not just Maya, but the whole computer itself. When Maya crashes, I have to shut down my computer and turn it on again. This at times can become very frustrating.

This recently happened today when I opened a scene that only had a plane, a sphere, and a volume light. It crashed when I tried to change the direction of the light. The only other program I had open was Safari at the time.

I have already tried creating a new "maya" folder, but this only minimizes the crashes, it does not get rid of them. Would I have to reinstall Maya again? Or are there other possible solutions that might fix this problem?

Thanks...