Have had a search and not found a similar problem which has been resolved.

Im running Windows 7 64bit on a Del studio 1555. It has an ATI HD 4570 card. I often play LFS using an external Dell 24" monitor, but the problem manifests even when not using this.

Rather frequently, perhaps one in 10 times, whenever I load up LFS, it gets to the main menu screen and hangs. Rebooting the machine and rebooting LFS does not work, and LFS still hangs. The only solution I seem to have found is either running a system restore to an earlier time, or by uninstalling LFS, rebooting the machine, and reinstalling it.

The machine itself occaisionally has problems with Flash enabled websites, but other than that is fine.

The problem you describe suggests that some file(s) within LFS's directory structure gets damaged. There are various reasons why this would happen, but since you have a laptop, damaged harddisk is kind of likely to be the problem.
You can try running "chkdsk c: /r" from the command line (assuming that LFS is installed on the C: partition).

Running checkdisk seems to have helped a little. Its still a bit buggy. If the game minimises, or windows is switched to midgame, it crashes, and it will not run in 'windowed' mode either.

I can put up with this for the time being though.