Freeze ups and no boot 9860

My 9860 arrived on the 19th of this month. Windows xp (home) was preinstalled and my specs are Pent 4 3.4, 1gb ram, nvidia 6800 Go, and 40 gig hard drive. Let me say upon starting the system I was very happy (no dead pixels I have read about).
(just as a quick background about myself for responses to know your talking with a newb). Now I would say I'm a amateur at pc's (pretty much power em up and use em with the occasional addition of RAM and maybe add a cd drive thats bout it. I have no Idea how to overclock, how to flash my bios, or even attempt to pick up a tool tinker with a pc on my own.

Anyway day 1 went well, I loaded Norton System works 04, a game called Everquest 2, a game called Thief, and netzero (for when im not home for my cable ). I played Everquest2 w/o any problems on Friday night. Saturday I jump on to play (and if you've attempted to play everquest 2 you know what the launchpad is). When you log on to Everquest 2 it checks to see if there are any updates then you hit "PLAY". Well upon doing this the pc locks up then reboots on its own. I figure its a glitch since it had just worked the day before. I try again with the same problem.

So I figure I'll leave the pc for a bit and try later. I come back , turn the pc on and nothing happens ( powers turns on and the cd rom lite flickers) windows does not boot. Repeated a few times with no luck. Then fourth try windows starts. I run a system check and says all is fine. So I log back on to Everquest hit "Play" and bang , freezes again. Again hard drive wont start for a while.

After I believe the seventh try windows kicks in. Now I figure maybe a glitch in the Everquest2 install so I add/remove it from the pc. I then go to load it and find my system no longer recognizes my cd rom, soundcard, or camera. So I go to reboot in hopes this will somehow fix it.

I reboot the system starts (no sound) but this time the cd rom is recognized, so I grab my driver cd's and reload the drivers. I then re install Everquest 2. I also check that all drivers are as new as they can be by checking sager site, and windows. I also compared my settings with my desktop that plays the EQ2 with no problems (Voodoo Rage AMD 64 system with 256 Nvidia ultra).

I've been to the tech forums for the Everquest 2 game and find some people are having similar problems (but not wide spread + my desktop works fine w EQ2). So now I start Everquest 2 and hit "play" and same thing freeze up and reboot. Now I'm assuming this problem has to be on my end since my desktop runs the game w/o problems, Synergi (sorry on spelling) says she runs the game on her 9860 w/o problems, and my cousin ordered the same system as I and he runs the game w/o problems.

So I guess what I'm asking is this a possible hard drive failure? I'm only assuming 1) because of the freeze ups 2) the random drop of drivers out of no where 3) the fact that 3 out of 5 times I attempt to start my 9860 the power comes on but fails to load to windows.

Any help would be helpful. and yes I have contacted pctorque and they refered me directly to Sager. Sager gave me a ref number # and said they would be in contact (that was earlier today) and I havent heard from them yet from my email or phone that was provided

Thanks

I'm not one to open up a computer (especially a brand new one I just bought heh) form what other peopel have told me they feel it is a ram or hard drive problem.

Over the passed couple of days random programs have either dropped from the hard drive or files go missing. A few times the drivers were lost upon turning the machine on. I started having problems with the EQ2 game first because that was the first program I loaded in and was anticipating the use of. When I started using other programs the pc started freezing up at random as well. Now 3/4 of the time the pc will not even start when powered up.

I have been speaking with a tech guy (Daniel sp?) from Sager for 2 days now and he has walked me through everything from re-installing drivers to reformating my entire hard drive and reloading everything. Still the pc freezes up and the files drop at random. His last suggestion was to email me new BIOS (again I am not comfortable doing much of this myself). I started to follow his directions but cant even get the pc to start up.

Im glad a lot of people are happy with their 9860 (including a relative of mine who bought one right after I did). But needles to say I am very un satisfied with mine. I have only had this pc since the 19th (last friday) . Couldnt get a call back from Sager till Monday and have been on tech support and re installing programs for over 2 days now. I even left work early for the expected email of the bio's that was a possible fix. It's now 930am on Wed. (est) and I'm waiting for another call back. I have no idea what I'm expected to try next with the Sager Tech support but I am extreamly frustrated. So far this has been the worst buying experience I have ever had with close to a $3,000 dollar purchase. I have read the policies at PCTorqe and I'm still well within the 10 day window and as far as I'm concerned this is as doa as it can get (since the sager guy cant even get me to boot in any longer atm). I'm hoping to get through to anyone at PCTorqe to alleviate my problem, whether they decide on the doa, a refund, or repair I am not objecting to any of the three at the moment but this is getting ridiculous with some of the stuff the tech guy would like me to try especially when I told him I was not comfortable with some of the things he was asking me to try.

I never expected any of this when I purchased my pc from PCTorque. I have bought pc's from Voodoo in the passed (along with my old hp's and dells) and decided to try out a Sager from PCTorque after reading forums on how GOOD their customer support was. In my case I'm at a loss as to why I feel as if I'm being hung out to dry so far. I will wait till Sager calls me back again I guess, I may try PCTorqes sales to see what can be done but so far last time I contacted them I've been refered back to Sager. Its now almost

Thanksgiving and the Christmas Season is right around the corner I have plans to go on a vacation with the Wife and baby mid December and hoped to have a working laptop for the trip now I just hope to have a working laptop period.

Just an update. I did speak with Sager Tech (Daniel). He tried walking me through everything w/o resolution. He RMA's it and sent out a new PC 2nd day air. It arrived yesterday and all is working great on it w/o any problems so far (cross fingers ;p). Everything loaded up and has been working great!