Before you ask, I've already tried Googling this to no avail. There are a lot of people on this site who have tons of experience with computers, so hopefully I can get a more straightforward and helpful answer from you guys.

For the past few months, my computer has been getting random stop errors (aka, the blue screen of death). The errors are both unprecedented and unpredictable. I could be playing a resource-demanding game for hours on end with no issues, then crash while reading an unenriched text document. Crashes could occur repeatedly in a short amount of time, or be absent for a day or more.

Using the event viewer and a blue screen debugger, I have determined that the problem is caused mainly by ntoskrnl.exe and hal.dll, two core drivers in the system32 file. Since both of these processes are vital to the machine's performance, I cannot delete them for fear of owning a new paperweight. This information, coupled with the fact that System Recovery does not solve the problem, has led me to believe that the operating system itself is corrupt. The hardware has passed both BIOS and physical inspection.

So here's my question: Will installing and using a different operating system, e.g. Ubuntu, end this problem? Logically it seems that because the corrupt windows drivers would no longer be used, the stop errors would cease. Do Linux systems indeed come with their own drivers independent of Windows?