Random BSOD/RestartsFollow

Greetings!

I'm sort of at my wits end here, hence the post. I don't normally like getting other people involved before trying to fix myself, but I won't lie when I say I'm not the greatest at computers yet. Though I am learning and do know a little bit.

First off, my system info:
OS Name - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Version - 6.1.7600 Build 7600
Processor - AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 630 Processor, 2800 Mhz, 4 Core(s)
BIOS Version/Date - American Megatrends Inc. 0906, 4/14/2010
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) - 6 GB
Display adapters - ATI Radeon HD 5850

I had this computer built by my brother back in July. I've been having intermittent issues with BSODs and random system resets ever since. There's no real trigger for them that I can find, I could be doing anything from browsing the web to playing FFXIV to nothing at all and it will reset. I downloaded a temperature monitor in case it was a heat issue, but even when playing FFXIV (the most taxing game I own currently), it doesn't get above 50 Celsius which seems normal to me. I've opened the case and made sure everything was seated properly and blew out any shred of dust I could find. All drivers are updated. I ran a memtest to check for bad memory. Still having issues.

I was poking around the event viewer, and I believe this is the relevant error, as it seems to pop up at around the same time the system BSODs:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x00000124 (0x0000000000000000, 0xfffffa8006785028, 0x00000000b6754000, 0x0000000000000175). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 010911-20061-01.

This happens several times a week. I live across the country from my brother, so he's been unable to troubleshoot for me, and I don't know any computer-savvy people here that I...um...trust to know what they're doing. It should be noted that my husband has this same exact build, with no issues.

Any ideas? Apologies for the length, I was trying to include all relevant info. Please let me know if you need me to check anything else.

Nothing's overclocked. My brother offered to overclock mine, however because I'm not very computer savvy outside the basics, I didn't want something to go crucially wrong and not have him around to troubleshoot. I'll go ahead and check the HDD, as I hadn't thought of that. I'll post with what I find out.

I'm a little upset that it'd be a hardware issue, everything on here is new as of July. Having to pony up more cash to fix something six months old isn't something I can do right now. :(

By the 0906 bios revision number, I'm going to guess this is an Asus motherboard, in which case the issue might be faulty ram timings that need to be fixed by a bios update. Its a fairly common issue unfortunatly with their early revision bios's. It could also be a truly bad ram module, or a bad / corrupted driver. Heat could cause one of those, but 122F is well inside normal operating temperatures, and is actually a little cooler than average for full load.

Here's what I would do to troubleshoot further.
1. Download and run speedfan http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php and go to the Hard drisk drive tab, and select your hard drive to run the SMART error scan. Take a screenshot and post it here if possible, or e-mail it to me Kaolian@allakhazam.com

2. Check which motherboard you have. You can find that out by downloading and running CPU-z http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html from the mainboard tab. report the model information back here and we'll check and see if there is an updated bios. If it is an asus board, and if there is an update available, updating your bios is fairly painless, though there is an element of risk in it. It may be something you want your brother to take care of for you.

3. After the bios update, if any is applied, download the zipped ISO file copy of the memtest disk from here:
http://www.memtest.org/
Burn that ISO to a disk, then boot to that disk and run the memtest memory diagnostic. Doing this prior to a bios update if there is an update available might yield a false positive for a vad stick of ram, so I wouldn't worry about that right away.

4. On the theory that it could be something other than hardware, download and run the free secunia PSI http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/ and update anything it claims is out of date (thats essentially windows update for all the non microsoft software out there)

5. You may also want to check your antivirus and ensure it is up to date, patch windows updates, etc. If all that doesn't do the trick, we may want to look at updating some drivers.

On the contrary, if it's only 6 months old, it's probably under warranty. Narrowing down a faulty part (if that's the problem) would be better sooner rather than later.

Well, there is a bios update available. Version 1006, but it looks like its just a CPU compatability update, not a stability fix. Might not hurt to install it anyways.

http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=ef0qgvMIwOUagAVl

To install it, download and extract the bios file, then place it on a flash disk or the root hard drive at c:\ or burn it to a dvd. Then boot into bios by pressing the delete key when powering on your computer, when prompted (or it might be F1, i forget) once you are in bios, find "Asus EZ Flash" and locate your biod file inside. Flash the bios, and hope the power doesn't go out. If the bios file is corrupt, it won't flash. If the power did happen to go out while flashing, you would need to do a full CMOS reset.

Before you flash the bios, pay careful attention to the boot device order, especially if you have more than one hard drive. If your computer won't boot after the bios update, chances are that order got reset and you just need to set your current C:\ drive back to being the boot drive.

After that, run memtest.

At this point, given the bios revision, I'm leaning towards a faulty ram module. If that is the case, replacing it is easy and fairly inexpensive.

The hard drive can checked out clean, some minor overheating at some point in its past history, but all other indicators were solid with no errors, nothing to make it BSOD certanly.

Maybe download and run malwarebytes too in addition to Avast just to see if it picks anything up? If you are up to date and fully patched, its not likely or else you would be seeing alot worse symptoms.

It could also theoretically be an issue with the video card ram. if you have access to a different video card, perhaps swap them out for a week or so, or put that card in someone elses PC and see if the same thign occurs?