Windows 7 - Dual Boot Windows 7 and Windows 7?

OK, I forgot to mention something.

Since the box that I'm using was supplied by my university, IT has crafted a custom image that has NO bloatware (including HP ProtectTools - bleech), NO trial programs, NO unnecessary drivers, and nearly all of the software we will be needing for our stay here, such as SolidWorks, LabView, etc. I have already disabled nearly all non-essential startup items (SolidWorks background downloader, etc.). What's more, I got a third re-ghost last week, and only installed the essentials before taking an image for restoring the system myself.

As for the broken car analogy, I think it's a bit inaccurate. If you get a flat tire, you replace the tire. However, if your car has 250 horses under the hood BUT also has a history of stalling at the most inopportune times, you wouldn't use it to enter a street race. I can't yet justify buying a new car, but if I can get my current one to stop stalling, that would be great.

I do like the user account idea - I might just do that.

DeaconFrost - this may be a silly question, but where can I find the crash reports or find out what caused it?

Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) Posting Instructions - Windows 7 Forums

What AV are you running now?

Other than AV what exceptions are you allowing to running a Clean Boot as suggested?

Unfortunately, there was no BSOD. The system just shut down.

I'm running the school-provided version of AVG Anti-Virus Business Edition 2011.

Check in the Event Viewer for something listed.

The car analogy works, because you had an issue with one install, and your solution was to add a second install, rather than fix the original problem. What if the crash was due to bad memory. You could spend the money for a second license, only to be repeating the problem.

AVG is not recommended any longer by anyone here after it bloated up a few years ago. You'll get better performance with no issues using Microsoft Security Essentials with the Windows 7 firewall.

OK, I see an event from that date, it's listed as "Critical", with a Kernel-Power source and event ID 41.

As for AVG, is it really that bad? I'm a little hesitant to accept an antivirus solution from Microsoft. Granted, I'm not really well-versed in the AV market anymore.

It is MS's OS, so it's success depends upon the way it is protected. But by all means ignore the opinons of all of the experts here who've been with the OS since before it was released, and use an AV which not one of us would use.

Did you find a crash dump when you ran the collection tool for posting up BSOD dump files?

Perhaps I was not clear.
I did not intend to contest this community's collective experience - rather, I expressed my concern with using an antivirus coded by MS, since it's history relating to reliability and security (ME, Vista, etc.) has at times been... questionable in the past. I need to trust the antivirus software that will be protecting the computer I use for school, work, and musical composition/performance. This machine HAS to work.
However, if Security Essentials is as good as you say it is, I might as well take an expert's word for it since, as I said, I haven't been particularly up-to-date with the AV market.

I have included the crash report as indicated by the BSOD posting instructions.

EDIT: I realize this thread is deviating from the original topic somewhat. Does it make sense to continue it as it is?

Just got rid of AVG and installed MSE. Happy so far - slimmed down my processes by about 5 and I seem to have lower CPU usage. This should help stability.