How do I stop my computer from crashing? Recently, I've been having problems with my late 2009 MacBook Pro crashing several times a day. How can I fix it?

I'm running OS 10.7.3 with 8 GB of RAM.
This is a setting that Apple has for some reason decided to hide completely, and can easily be fixed with a few simple steps.


First, go to /System/Library/CoreServices/ and right-click on Finder. Select Show Package Contents, navigate to …/Contents/Info.plist and open it in TextEdit.
Near the bottom, below the last &lt;/array&gt; but before the last &lt;/dict&gt;, add the following two lines of code:
&lt;key&gt;ShowCrashPrefs&lt;/key&gt;
&lt;true/&gt;
Save and quit TextEdit. Hold ctrl+opt while clicking on the Finder icon and select Relaunch. Once Finder fully loads again, advance to step 4.
Open Finder preferences with Finder > Preferences… or ⌘+, and navigate to the Advanced tab. Tick the "Show crash prefpane in System Preferences" option.

Launch System preferences and select the new Crash icon, under System. When it loads, drag the crash frequency slider to Min.