My MacBook Pro Keeps Crashing

[Habusho]

I've had my MBP for the past 1.5 years or so and it's been a dream. It's a 2.2 Ghz Intel i7 Quad core. I upgraded the RAM to 16GB myself later on.

Lately when running apps, the screen either goes black needing a hard reset or the screen is black with green stripes or it distorts into 2 and the system is un-responsive again requiring a hard reset.
When booting up, 2 out of 3 times it'll get stuck on the white, gray screen after the apple logo.
Does anybody have any idea why this is happening?

 

[ChrisMan287]

Try booting it in safe mode to see if it still happens.

When powering it on, hold the shift key until the Apple logo appears.

 

[Binomio]

Install the RAM that came with the laptop, and test again.
If the issue perists you have a failing video card.

 

[T5BRICK]

Run Apple hardware test. I suggest the extended test, looped overnight.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509

I'd suspect bad RAM, but the stripes on the display could indicate a GPU problem. Do you know which GPU the computer is running when it happens?