Thanks folks. Doing some more investigating tonight and leaning towards a hardware issue. Luckily I've still got warranty coverage. Photoshop is doing the same exact thing, and my graphics tablet also just stops working intermittently. System also just ignored my attempts at shutting down earlier and I had to use the power button to turn it off.

I think I'll name it HAL. :)

Going to reformat and reinstall first just to make sure there's not any software conflicts.