Which Patch level of 2012 are you running?

RC0

RTM

or SP1?

I ran into an issue like this on a Win7 box with RC0 that was excessively frustrating. In the end, I wound up lowering min and max memory as well as moving to RTM (this was almost a year ago).

Also, there was a question from Gail concerning VM or physical. I had been assuming physical, but the point is valid. If this is a VM, it could be a balloon driver issue.

About three years ago, I also ran into a similar issue with new machines. Eventually we reseated the memory (all banks) and the issue was resolved. Some of the memory had worked itself loose and it was causing erratic behavior like you describe. Worth a shot.

Can you tweak your memory settings first and see if that eases the pain?