Since yesterday I'm consistently having system lockups turning into a BSOD a few minutes after booting windows both in Normal mode as in Safe mode. It doesn't matter what program I start, the system will just lock up after a while (the loading circle keeps spinning) and eventually I get the dreaded Blue screen. While the loading circle is spinning I can still move my mouse for some reason.
The Error code and the first paramater in the stop screen is always the same:
0x000000F4 (0x0000000000000003)
No dump file is created unfortunatly.
Nothing happens after the two lines:
Collecting data for crash dump...
Initializing disk for cush dump...
The system is farily new, as I assembled it last August. These are my system specs:
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650 Watt, 20+24 Pins
Motherboard: GigaByte GA-Z68X-UD3
CPU: Intel Core I5 2500K
CPU cooler: Zalman CNPS10X Performa
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 Dual Fan 1024 MB
SSD: OCZ Vertex 2 90 GB, S-ATA II / 300, 275 MB's, 285 MB's, 3,5 Inch
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1 TB, 7200 Rpm, 32 MB
DVD: Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7260S-0B S-ATA, OEM
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 ENG, Home Premium, 64-Bit
Memory: Kingston HyperX Dual Channel 8 GB, PC3-12800, 1600 MHz, 9, Non-ECC
Googling the error message leads me to suspect my SSD as the cause of this error. The SSD is flashed to firmware 1.33, the most recent firmware seems to be 1.35.
As the SSD might be malfunctioning I changed the location for the dump file to be changed to one of my regular Hard Disk Drives. However, still no dump file is created.
I've tried system repair and system restore to no avail.
I'm hoping someone out here can help me troubleshoot the problem further so I can decide how to best proceed.
Right now I'm thinking of removing the SSD and reinstalling Windows on one of my other HDD's. Should this fix the problem, how can I confirm the SSD is the cause before sending the drive back to my supplier?
Many thanks for your help and support!