BAD_POOL_HEADER error on sony vaio laptop

ok so i got a new laptop for christmas from my dads boss. it is a sony viao, M series i believe. my dad did a quick format of the drive to get rid of some virus issues that it had in the past. then installed windows xp home, SP1 on it. When he gave it to me i upgraded the computer to SP3 and put all upgrades in the laptop. i have not however finished installing all the old drivers.

my problem is this. pretty much any time i am using the computer it will randomly crash on me. one of two things will happen. a lot of horizantal lines appear on the screen (the pixels are all diferent colors) and will disapear after a few seconds, or the blue screen comes up and shows the error message BAD_POOL_HEADER comes up.

i have not found any sort of pattern for the blue screen. sometimes it will happen when im on the internet, and other times it wont. it seems fairly random.

also, i once got a message mentioning a driver bios failiure or somthing like that, it did not stay up long enough before restarting itself so i could read it. so i tried installing the newest version of bios driver i could find on sonys website, and when it pulled up the driver install screen it said "Can not read system information"

thats about it i hope someone can help me.

oh yah this might help. or might not. the programs i have loaded on this computer are.

windows XP
ITunes
spore creature creature
and the ea download manager that came with spore.
+ SP3 and a few of the basic drivers (Viao update, and touch pad is all ive downloaded so far i believe.)