Laptop having startup problems; BSOD

My roommates Toshiba laptop at school is having a problem getting into Windows. The screen prompts him that his computer did not restart properly and the screen pops up with the options of: Safe Mode, Last Known Good Config., etc. Any option he chooses automatically restarts the laptop. So I told him to press F8 and disable automatic restart to find out what the STOP error was.

*** STOP 0x000000a5 (0x00000011, 2,3,4) is the error he receives. I looked this up on Microsoft and it points to ACPI ususally around the time of a new Windows Install. This just don't make sense to what he has been doing; he has not reinstalled windows, new hardware, made changes, or anything. Can this possibly a stick of ram going bad?

I am hoping you can give me some options on how to go about fixing this without swapping hard drives, reinstalling windows, etc. I am currently in NY so I can not get my hands on the laptop. Thanks in advance.

 

Find memtest here or at google, write it to a disk, boot it up for 1-5 passes.