I had a sager laptop that would do the randomly. Never figured out the cause.
I think it was a loose connection or power related issue, it would clear up for me after a cold boot.
The laptop had leaking caps by the cpu, it still...
you need an application like ghost or some other disk copy app. the easiest is a disk to disk copy. I have only been able to get norton ghost to work for me. Most of the good ones will copy the files to cds/dvds. I would guess 6 cds if...