Windows 7: multiple BSOD's and freezes on startup.

The problem i am experiencing is a series of somewhat random bsod's [irql not equal, system service exception, sometimes it attributes the crash to ataport.sys but usually to nothing] and more rarely just straight up system freezes. oddly enough, i have found that if you quickly open a large memory/cpu intensive program [say, photoshop with a large psd or a game], you could usually dodge the crashes entirely. still thats hardly a long term solution and the system eventually will crash, but the time this takes is random. sometimes it will go hours, sometimes days. crashes typically happened when the computer was idling with no programs running or with just internet services running. anyway this has been going on for sometime and i figure this should probably be addressed while the computers still letting me get away with logging on outside of safe mode.

system is an HP laptop, dv6-1264 [NV144UA#ABC] running windows 7 home premium x64. this is not the original OS for the laptop, its an upgrade from a preinstalled windows vista. The laptop is a few months short of two years old, with the OS install being only a few months over a year old.

I was unable to generate a performance monitor report, i recieved a 'system cannot find the path specified' error.