Solved Two computers, nearly synchronous BSOD's, stop code F4 or 7B

Hi,

This is weird. My wife and I have identical computers I built last ~November. We both recently (last couple of days) getting BSOD's - usually with the stop code F4, but I have also seen 7B occasionally.

Specs:

PSU: PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mk II 950W
GPU: EVGA 025-P3-1579-AR GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi)
CPU: Intel Core i7-2600 Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz
System Drive: Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Storage Drive: (different for each of us - I use a WD Caviar Black ~640GB)
Motherboard: ASRock Z68 PROFESSIONAL GEN3
Memory: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
O/S: Windows 7 x64 Home Premium.

Zip files attached per the stickied thread. I had to remove the memory.dmp because it was like 400 MB. Let me know if you need it and I'll figure out some way to get it to you.

I suppose I should mention what it "looks like" when this happens. My wife and I are both gamers, so windows freezes / hangs for about 3 minutes, then it comes unstuck for about 30 seconds and then BSOD's. During the 3 minute hang the hardware still responds - I can NumLock & CapsLock and my mouse will still move, but it turns into the "whirling circle." Occasionally I can even alt-tab, but I can't start task manager, etc.

So far I've done check disks on both system drives and both storage drives. We have up-to-date anti-virus (Avast), and also use Spybot Search & Destroy. I've also updated my drivers and BIOS, and I've cleared my BIOS once or twice as well (which actually seems to help more than anything).

Thanks so much for your help... super stressed about this.

Since you both have the same problem, I am going to jump to a conclusion based on the M4 in your specs. You need to update the firmware. Further information on your crash may be found in either of these locations (most likely the first location):

If the above does not resolve the crash, stop using WhoCrashed so we can analyze the .dmps, or at least wait until after you upload them before running WhoCrashed. 3rd party blue screen tools do not give very helpful information in most cases. They often just inform the user that the system is not working right without actually giving information as to why the system is not working right. I believe WhoCrashed also deletes the .dmps after it is done (or has an option to do so).

Confirmed. Firmware issue. I found out after I reformatted my PC, but before I reformatted my wife's. :-\

Thanks much.

You're welcome. Glad it was a fairly straight forward solution, and I am very happy to see it solved!