Sorry I'm late to the party, but I wanted to lend my support regarding this rare non-puzzle related entry.
Laptops can be extremely cranky on occasion. My IBM T42 had a problem with a broken fan over the summer, which was really obnoxious. I had to flip it over at night, to expose the base, where the CPU was, to the air, because otherwise it would overheat and shut off impolitely.
As for demonstrating that it's a hardware error, which it does sound like, you could try booting a Knoppix disk, and seeing if it still crashes. If it *is* a hardware issue, you may be up shit's creek, because laptop hardware is by necessity a lot more integrated and purpose-built than generic desktop hardware. One way or another, be sure to back up your data, because nothing sucks like lost data. (But I guess you already did that, else why would you try Windows restore?)
Sympathy.
Laptops can be extremely cranky on occasion. My IBM T42 had a problem with a broken fan over the summer, which was really obnoxious. I had to flip it over at night, to expose the base, where the CPU was, to the air, because otherwise it would overheat and shut off impolitely.
As for demonstrating that it's a hardware error, which it does sound like, you could try booting a Knoppix disk, and seeing if it still crashes. If it *is* a hardware issue, you may be up shit's creek, because laptop hardware is by necessity a lot more integrated and purpose-built than generic desktop hardware. One way or another, be sure to back up your data, because nothing sucks like lost data. (But I guess you already did that, else why would you try Windows restore?)
Ethan