This started a couple days ago. I tried to wake my framework, but the power light was off, and the keyboard unresponsive.
Holding the power button down for, 10, 15 seconds the machine rebooted, but the keyboard remains dead, and the power light dead as well.
I’m using it right now docked to a thunderbolt hub, with an external keyboard.
Details:
Keyboard unresponsive
Fingerprint reader works (!?)
Power button appears to unresponsive, but when held down for a long time appears to reboot the machine
Trackpad works
I have the internal display off when connected to an external display via my dock. When I unplug, normally the internal display comes back to life. Now, if I unplug, the display lights up for a few seconds then goes black. Plugging back into my dock everything’s fine.
This has happened twice. The first time, a couple days ago, I took the keyboard off and checked if any of the ribbon cables seemed loose, but I’m not really an expert. They seemed fine. When I put it back together everything worked normally. This second time has not had a happy ending.
Any suggestions for self-diagnosis of this before I escalate to customer service?
I’m running Fedora 39 for an OS. BIOS 3.03. Not certain if that’s an important data point.
Emphasizing this data point: When the failure occurs, simply rebooting does not resolve the problem. On reboot the keyboard remains dead, the power button light remains unlit. Trackpad works fine.
The fact that this persists after a reboot signifies a hardware failure to me.
I had a similar issue and it fixed itself after a few minutes. What I expect is that the embedded controller or something crashes or gets confused, however I haven’t been able to pin it down.
What I would suggest is, that you open it and disconnect the battery for a bit. That should reset the whole system and possibly make it recover? In general modern hardware doesn’t seem to power down completely when turning it off and disconnecting the battery often seems necessary to reset hardware glitches.
So last night I pulled the battery, gave it a few minutes, and reassembled. Currently, the keyboard is working. But the last time it mysteriously started working again, it only worked for a couple days before repeating so I don’t know that I’m out of the woods yet.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Nope, the keyboard has failed again. It was working this morning, until I let it go to sleep, at which point the failure re-occurred. I’ll have to reach out to customer support, as this renders this computer unusable.
Followup - I re-seated the ribbon cables on the keyboard component (keyboard, trackpage, etc). My framework has now been waking from sleep successfully since Sunday. I’m cautiously optimistic that this is resolved.
Another followup, and hopefully some data to add. The issue has happened two more times since my last post. And I want to mention I have opened a ticket with support, so Framework knows, but so far nothing actionable has come of it.
My most recent experience is as follows:
Walk home from work with my Framework in my backpack, in a sleeve. It’s been asleep for 5+ hours, last time it was open was briefly during my lunch break.
Open laptop, and it appears fully dead. Screen doesn’t light. Power button is dark. No response to keyboard or mouse. i don’t use keyboard backlight so I don’t know if it was lit or not.
I plug my laptop into my thunderbolt dock, and my external monitor wakes, and shows login screen. External keyboard and mouse work. So my laptop IS ALIVE. Just unresponsive when on it’s own. Keyboard and mouse still dead. No power light. Interesting note - I logged in via fingerprint reader, which apparently was alive during all this.
I unplug from dock, and screen dies, power light remains off. Keyboard and mouse won’t wake it.
After a few seconds, the screen flickers on and off, and back on, power light does same.
Laptop is now behaving correctly.
Given the flicker in step 6, it seems to me that Nico1’s suggestion that this is an issue with the embedded conrtroller (or some such) might be reasonable. The flicker feels to me like some controller rebooted and the lid came back to life.
I’ve had another input cover failure this morning. Tried the following:
full power off and reboot, the input cover remained dead.
Connecting to thunderbolt dock, the external monitor and display worked great, interestingly, the system settings reported NO internal (e.g. laptop) display.
In the end, I had to remove the input cover, unplug the ribbon cable connecting it to the main board, waited 30s, reconnected and re-assembled and the laptop works correctly again. I have to assume that power-cycling the lid caused something in it to reboot.
I would REALLY like if somebody from framework even acknowledged this thread? Like, even just to say, “hi, we’re listening”.
But in this state, my laptop is only usable docked. It’s not a laptop at all since I can’t rely on it working when I open the lid.
Where are you located? At least in Europe, input covers seem to have been available again from the marketplace for a while. So, customer support should be also able to send them out again.
That’s strange. I still see them as available after switching to the US store (under the “keyboard” section). For other products, switching the store updates the availability accordingly (e.g., the matte display is not available in Europe at the moment, but seems available in the US and Canada).
Wow, I was looking in the wrong sections of the store. I had ignored the keyboard section because I (guess) I’d misremembered it as having only keyboards, and not input covers.
Buying one right now. If it doesn’t resolve my problem I’ll return it.
Ah, yes, of course. The input cover kits disappeared from the store completely during the weeks the whole inventory was checked for the defective connectors…
Do you have a case open with Support? This seems like something that should be covered under warranty, and they also may be able to provide more guidance than you might get here in the forum. Best of luck.
I do have a case open with Support - since November - but they’re pretty much treading water with me.
That being said maybe they’re taking me more seriously lately because yesterday they asked me to update my SSD firmware (just did that this morning) and to reset my mainboard to put the BIOS in a default state, which I’ll be doing this afternoon since it requires a disassembly.
I assume they’re just getting me to a baseline for diagnosis, which seems reasonable.
But since this expensive machine has been so unreliable for me, and since it’s taken a month to get anywhere with support, I have no real option besides buying a cover and determining if that resolves my issue. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, well, I don’t know what to do after that other than buying the coolermaster case and accepting that I have to buy a different kind of laptop.
