Vista infrared receiver problem

A friend of mine is running Vista on his gaming machine. When playing Oblivion, the infrared receiver prevents the ~ tilde key from opening the console. EVERY time he plays the game, he has to shut off the infrared receiver, so he can use the ~ tilde key to open the console. The problem is that at some random time during his gaming, Vista decides to reinstall the infrared receiver, which causes the RAM to max out at 100% and crash the game. How do you prevent Vista from doing these annoying and stupid things during a gaming session? It is really frustrating to have an operating system do something that YOU HAVE NOT ASKED IT TO DO during a time when you are running a program, and that it causes a crash, totally out of your control. Is there a way to a) shut off whatever is trying to reinstall the infrared receiver. and b) stop Vista from doing stupid **** you don't want it to do, while you are trying to use a piece of software? WTF? Users deserve to be in control of their own computers. Please help.