New out of the box G74SX-DH71 crashing

So finally received my G74SX-DH71 yesterday, unboxed it, plugged it in turned it on, boot to windows screen and it restarts. I thought "uh oh, but ok let's keep going."
I let it start normally, get to the setup screen this time and enter my name and pc name. Again, restart.
I let it restart windows normally again and get through the set up process. Restarts again. This time I boot into safe mode and have no problems. System event was a critical error kernal 41.

Well, since it's running fine in safe mode and not knowing what may be causing the problem I reboot to windows normally. I get in, run win updates reboot with no problems. Restart a few times with no problems. Play around for about an hour with no problems.

This morning I turn it on and it restarts again at the login screen but boots to safe mode with no problems.

Haven't been able to get ahold of Asus yet and will likely get home from work too late to try. So...I'm asking for all of you to lend your expertise.
Does this sound like a driver issue? A bad image install from Asus? Ie a bad windows install?
Or a hardware issue? Device manager shows no problems. Ran a men test with no errors.
Should I flash the bios? Reinstall windows? If its a driver I have no idea which it would be.

One other weird thing I found. When it booted normally I was browsing my folders and it wouldn't let me into the Downloads folder or photos or a couple others. Deleted them and "restored" them and had access again.

What do you all think? Do I tinker before I talk with Asus or should I wait?

Thanks for any suggestions,
Paul

I guess never mind trying to help.  ASUS tech support completely trashed it by trying to restore windows. Won't even boot now :)  So, they say its a hardware issue, and I need to return it.  Lucky me.

 

 

Well, I decided instead to return it to amazon for a replacement...figured I would rather have a new one than a repaired one.

Will do!

*edit*
Will receive the new one Mon. Will post up how it works out.

I've got my fingers crossed. It took me a long time to make the decision to go with Asus and this model. I'm hoping to not be disappointed.
Edited by Hutton - 2/18/12 at 4:21pm

Received the new one today. So far so good!  Just trying to figure out which drivers are up to date. (none)

 

If I have any problems with this one I'll post.

Remember though, I bought and returned through Amazon.com and did not follow through with Asus.  They wanted me to send it to them to repair it.  

 

I can't say enough good things about dealing with Amazon.  Only thing that could have been better would have been to be able to walk in to a local store.

No, it started rebooting itself with the first press of on.  I think it restarted itself 6 times before I even got to a windows desktop.  

 

I also don't usually subscribe to the latest/greatest and prefer to use what is known to work.  In this case I've only updated the display drivers so far and the windows updates.  The rest I'll likely leave alone for now.