Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Dell laptop issues. Ken to the rescue!(or another)

I assume you have another working machine with a CD burner in it, from the fact that you've made the recovery disc.

Get the Memtest86 ISO, and burn it to a CD. Boot from that disc and let it run through the test once (it'll take a while).

If that works out OK, I'd say that Windows is pretty hosed, and it's time to back up your data, format, and reinstall.