Annoying Photoshop Problem.

Hi. Ive just recently got Photoshop CS3 Extended. Its the first time i have ever used photoshop before so im a complete novice.
Everything seems to work just fine except every now and again, when i leave photoshop minimized for awhile it wont let me do anything when i go back on it. The icon is displayed as the small hand icon. It lets me click on all the tools and everything else but they just dont seem to work.
When this happens i have to close Photoshop and wait for awhile then re-open it. Usually about 10 minutes but sometimes i need to restart my pc.
This problem is becoming quite annoying now so if anyone can help me sort it out then that would be greatly appreciated.

Please help,
Frustrated PS3 user :confused:

oh man, i used to have this prob years ago when i used PS5, used to drive me scatty. i *think* back then it was down to my system being woefully short on onboard memory and swapping between stuff used to confuse/hang Pshop which is a total memory hog. what's you machine set up like, and how much other stuff are you doing whilst PS is minimised?