Problems with Crossfire

Okay so my friend introduced me to this game, so I downloaded it and started to play. Ever since the beginning, when I try to open Crossfire sometimes, or when I just start out playing, the screen becomes all black for me and I have to manually shut down my computer. Before, the program should work after several times.
But recently, even before the Christmas patch, there has been more problems. I've been faced with more black empty screens in which I have no way of getting out of and sometimes changes in my screen resolution and color which go away after I shut down my computer and start it over again. Today, when I shut my computer down and turned it on, my computer even gave beeping noises and shut down on itself. Then my computer had to fix itself and I reinstalled Crossfire. It hasn't worked much today, only let me play 3 whole games and d/ced me on about 10 others.

Can anyone help me? I have Windows Vista

Oh and a lot of times I get a runtime error 7, I think.