Framework 13 has been solid since I received it almost a year ago. Today, it froze randomly when connecting a webcam over usb. I had to hold the power button to force shutdown. After shutdown, it would not start.
When plugged in, the tiny white led on the left is solid white. Pressing the power button does nothing; no light, no sounds, nothing.
Things I tried:
I reset the mainboard.
I checked the touchpad and input panel connections to ensure the button wasn’t disconnected.
Other stuff:
When the input cover is removed, the led blinks red; i think this is expected because of the intrusion switch.
There is nothing plugged in except the power cable when attempting to turn on.
I’ve tried turning on with and without the power adapter attached.
The issue is before boot, BIOS, and OS bootstrap. In case you care, I’m running Arch linux, but I can’t see how that matters since this is pre-boot.
I’ve searched forums and google and haven’t found any other things to try. This is my main work machine so I’m kinda dead in the water until this works.
Hmm, that’s rough. Next thing I’d try is to connect a different charger and USB cable to rule out one of those dying. After that I’d check and see if maybe some of the memory has died by seeing if it’ll boot using one or the other stick. I hope you can get it figured out!
Multiple chargers: I’ve got 2 macbook chargers. Both work fine with a macbook and my other framework 13 11th gen.
Input panel issue: I have an 11th gen that still works so I did some swaps. The input panel from the 11th gen did not start the 12th gen. The input panel from the 12th gen worked fine with the 11th gen. The input panel is not the issue.
I removed each memory stick, but it didn’t matter. Memory issues usually surface after there is power anyways. It was worth a try.
I understand that framework doesn’t have phone support, but is there some sort of service level expectation for email support?
This is making me rethink using these laptops for work.
First non-automated response is expected within 1 business day from the time the ticket is opened / received. No SLA on duration to issue resolution.
Reference:
IMO, Framework Laptops aren’t quite there yet when it comes to the corporate use cases…but they’re working on it. Reliability of the hardware has to come first (of any laptop / systems, not just Framework), then issue resolution / redundancy handling. In a corporate setting, there’s likely a few spare units on standby, but reliability is the first criteria, spares are the last resort.
Yep. I started with that article. The power button never has any light so I did the input panel checks as recommended (and even swapped the panels b/c I own 2 framwork laptops)
Is it flashing a pattern?
It is blinking red on/off consistently and it stops when the input panel (the keyboard) is replaced. The light is solid white when the input panel is placed. It appears to be the intrusion detection blink.
If you swap the motherboard and the 12th gen board still shows no signs of life, but the 11th just starts fine, I wouldn’t have much hope for the 12th gen board.
I’m not ready to teardown my working machine to diagnose this one. When I hear back from support, I’ll update this thread in case anyone else has a similar problem in the future.
Are you getting any codes in the lights on the side, or is the machine not getting to that point? You likely know this, but remember that the initial boot after a reset can take some number of minutes while checking(?) the ram. Good luck, I hope that you are able to get things resolved soon.
I never get to that point. The power button never illuminates. The right led never illuminates.
The left led is solid white when the input cover is in place. The left led blinks red (on/off no sequence) when input cover is off which is expected when the intrusion switch is open.
I will be interested to hear what Support has to say. In the meantime, you might try this shot in the dark.
Remove all expansion modules, disconnect the main battery, carefully remove the RTC battery, hold down the power button for 30 seconds. Carefully re-install the RTC battery, connect the main battery, use only one usb-c card to supply power, and try to power on the machine. Try the card + power in each of the four slots. I don’t have high confidence that this will fix things, but it may be worth a try. I’m sorry that you are dealing with this. If I had to guess I’d say that for some reason the board died. Hopefully it is still under warranty and you are able to get it replaced.
I quite literally had something similar happen to me today/yesterday! Sad part is this is my work laptop, and I’m oncall!
One of my cables is a USB-C Dongle that in turn has an HDMI, USB-C power, and a USB switch that connects to my Keyboard/Mouse and my desktop computer. That switch is flaky and in the past has made weird static noises, so I suspect that could be the culprit? At the same time, since you mentioned
This is my main work machine so I’m kinda dead in the water until this works.
I’m wondering if the timing and the fact that our machines might be ‘managed’ might have something to do with it.
Anyway, story goes:
My laptop froze when I disconnected all my monitors for the day (aliased xrandr command and then pull out the cables). Screen went blank, nothing happened anymore, power button still white. Hold down the power for a bit and nothing happens, so I just close it and call it a day. Plugged it in and left it over night
Fast forward to this morning… Side LED is white when connected to power. Pressing power button does nothing. Tried plugging in a variety of orientations of my cables, plugging in the crappy dongle with switch and switching between devices in hopes that would do literally anything… nope.
Had my laptop open on my desk, hit the power button a bunch of times, then unplugged it. Was looking away when I noticed the power button turned on about 20 seconds later and the thing boots as normal (with the caveat that the system clock is now 2 months off).
Any suggestions for what I can do to diagnose what just happened? Logs to search for?
I was able to get the diagnostic lights to show consistently this morning where they wouldn’t before. Here is the output and the errors from the lights documentation
Hello,
I left my my 12th gen mainboard (1280P) unplugged for ~2 weeks. When I came back from holiday, I worked with it until the battery died. They I plugged it in. And it does not boot anymore. The led is blinking red for :
Power Good VCCIN_AUX
Fan detected and spins up
CPU reached S0 state
I have read My Framework Laptop (Intel 12th Gen Intel® Core™) is not powering on , but it did not help.
I have tried charging with/without the expansion cards: same result.
I have tried multiple power adapters: same result.
I have tried to reset the mainboard: same result.
I have tried to remove the RAM / SSD: same result.
I have tried with only 1 stick of RAM: same result.
I have tried different RAM sticks: same result.
Please advise,
The Led code on the video is also indicating an issue with the Fan. Can you please try to reseat the FAN and see how it goes? Click here for guides. May we also request a clear picture of the entire mainboard showing all components?
Hadn’t time to test it out. Pretty sure it’s not the fan since I did not touch that at all. Still going to try it of course.
The community here is really great. I was concerned that I would post this and get no replies. I’ll try re-seating the fan.
Its kind of a bummer that it is only possible to get one message from support every 24h. I sent a few videos thus far so hopefully they figure out what to do. I also sent them this thread, but it is unclear if they are checking it.
I love this machine so I hope people keep buying them so framework can invest in more support.
Hey folks, I’ve also had 12gen die on me a week ago. During a couple of weeks before that I’ve got a few freezes, after first one touchpad stopped working, after few more it started working again, then stopped again. I’ve unplugged/plugged all ribbon cables, it didn’t help.
When powering on, there is audible click in the speakers, fan tries to spin up but stops in 0.5s.
I’ve removed the motherboard and tried booting it up when powered by usb charger. Blink pattern is R GGGG RRRRR GG, which indicates that fan doesn’t spin up and CPU is not reaching S0.
I’ve removed all the stickers from the MB and found a small hole in the package of the audio chip. My theory is that it’s burned out and short circuited power rails to the ground. It also explains click on power on.
Haven’t asked support yet – I’m travelling so won’t be able to do much, FW folks are also overloaded with batch1. If nothing helps I’ll try desoldering the chip to see if it helps.
@Tommy_Messbauer you can lightly press on intrusion detection switch to stop orange/red blinking – it’s at the very top of the board in the middle (on-board power switch is at top right). In your case seems like 3V/5V power is failing. You can try removing SSD, wifi and (maybe) RAM, and disonnecting all the cables (MB is supposed to work well standalone, in that coolermaster case, so only RAM is needed for it to POST). Who knows, maybe your ssd burned out and is short-circuting power.
I had stripped the machine down to barebones and the results were the same. The key to getting the diagnostic lights to show was taping down the intrusion switch, then using the motherboard switch to attempt to turn it on.
Support just got back to me and will be sending me a replacement motherboard.
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Side note: most of the USBc hubs that are available these days support pass-through charging. Most of the time (like 75% of the time), I opt to connect the charger directly to the port on the computer (we have 2 frameworks, a dell, and 2 macbooks). On the day this happened, the power was connected through the USBc hub.
I don’t think this matters because I’ve been using this same hub across multiple computers for over a year without issue. I’ll post this here in case others have seen any weirdness when using the pass-through charging of these hubs.
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Hardware fails sometimes and it has been a really long time since it’s happened to me… which reminds me - I need to backup my home directory when this machine is working again.
