So I’ve been lurking these forums for a while now because I’m experiencing random crashes.
Finding out what the cause is to random issues is usually very annoying to do but I think I found the problem.
Issue: Random freezes into reboot or just straight up restarting the laptop. Usually, or to be honest ONLY, while gaming (Anno 1800 and lately Ravenwatch).
Fixed: Removing one of my DIMMs, going single channel. With only 1 RAM slot utilized I have yet to run into any problems. However, I’m experiencing clear performance loss on single channel so it’s not an option buying a single 32gb dimm instead of 2x 16. I need the dual channel to have decent gaming performance.
Updated all drivers from Framework website, AMD apps and BIOS. Tried pretty much everything but the only solution seems to be running single channel which, again, won’t be a long term solution for me.
Yes, reasonably sure. I’ve tried running both modules in single channel: no issues. Also tried running dual channel while swapping the sodimms. Still crashes. So it might be hardware related maybe, with channel 1. But personally I think it’s rather something software related getting me corrupted data or I don’t know. Dual channel seems to give me issues somehow.
Also the crashes can happen within 30 seconds of starting a game or after 45 minutes. The only thing I tend to notice is that once it crashes once it starts crashing way more frequent. At first I thought it might’ve been thermal related (fans are going mad) but they all seem way in spec (70-80ish range at the highest). Also tried stresstesting with cinebench etc without issues and temps within spec.
EDIT: I’ve also replied to this topic: Framework 13 AMD Hard Crashing Issue where a user is having very similar issues. However, he also notes he has crashes with a single stick of 32gb ram from Crucial. So it might also be purely the amount of RAM that causes it?
Wasn’t familiar with Memtest but figured it out and did a couple of test runs (mainly test #5 and #9 as I read those are decent ones). Didn’t find any errors though. Also can’t find visible damage to the mainboard. Next step?
Can you provide any extra info about your system? E.g. OS, Linux version, kernel version, Windows version etc. ?
What does the crash look like? Do you get a crash dump, what happens?
Which expansion slot cards this you have plugged in at the time? What devices were connected at the time?
Is there any pattern, is the crash reproducible ?
If linux, are there any logs in /var/lib/system/pstore.
Yes.
Edition Windows 11 Home
Version 23H2
Installed on 4-10-2024
OS build 22631.4391
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22700.1047.0
Crash can look either like a sudden reboot of the system out of nowhere or a graphical glitch freeze which after a minute or so will reboot the system:
I have tried while on FW original charger (upper left slot) and on battery. I have 2 USB A and 2 USB C slots occupied. Only the charger port is used and 1 of the A ports with the Bluetooth mouse dongle.
Pattern seems to be: It pretty much always crashes while I game. Usually it might take up to an hour before it crashes but once it does, if I reboot the system and try gaming (different games) again it gets way more frequent. I don’t recall if it ever crashed while I wasn’t gaming. Not with 3D mark, cinebench or other benchmark/stresstesting either. So far it also hasn’t crashed while only using slot 1 with 1 stick of ram.
Lastly, yeah there are logs. These are from a while back so I can’t remember for 100% sure how or what but these are the filtered errorlogs from a night gaming where I had multiple crashes:
EDIT:
As you can see it crashed about 4 times (Critical ones are the actualy reboot times iirc) within an hour. Also I can’t be 100% sure but I think I started to game around 20:00ish or so, meaning the first crash took place after 2 hours and after that it kept happening frequently. Then I removed 1 stick at 23:11, played without issues for 2 hours. Tried reinserting the stick and immediate freeze (01:11 log)
It looks to me that it is either a driver bug, or bad RAM or bad Mainboard.
Maybe try running memtest for a longer period. Maybe overnight, or something like that.
Some people have reported problems with RAM, but only after running memtest for many cycles of the test.
In your logs, one of the errors is bluetooth related - BTHUSB.
This may be your Bluetooth mouse, or the laptop’s own bluetooth that is on the wifi card.
Can you open the BTHUSB error message and see if it tells you which device it is having a problem with?
For example, a misbehaving driver might be splating random data all across RAM, thus causing all sorts of problems.
Can you maybe try playing the game with a USB cabled mouse, instead of the bluetooth one and disable the bluetooth devices in device manager so the driver is not running.
The bluetooth might have nothing to do with the problem, so the error in the logs might just be a coincidence, but it is worth a try, if you are able.
Which graphics drivers are you using. Just the FW ones, or FW ones followed by latest from AMD?
There are some reports that the FW ones, although old, and more stable than the latest AMD ones.
I’m pretty sure I had the issues with FW drivers and decided to update to the AMD ones to see if that would fix it. That’s a while ago though. I could try a clean windows install I guess.
Memtesting had 0 error’s. Next thing is to do a full reinstall of Windows and making sure I have all the FW Bios/Driver updates. If that won’t fix it I’m at a loss really.
It might be worth a shot but since I’m quite sure I had these issues before the driver update (in fact, I think I updated them because of these issues) I don’t think that’ll fix it. Maybe something else is corrupted. Honestly I’m at a loss. Should probably start a ticket with support
Contacted Framework support. They asked a few things I have already tried and a few I haven’t. (Checked the SSD, reset the BIOS, reset the mainboard, etc).
Eventually they concluded I need a new mainboard and I’m in RMA now.
All in all very satisfied with the support. They got back to me sometimes multiple times a day and even in the weekend. Now let’s hope the issue will be fixed with a new mainboard. Will update later.
Got the new mainboard this week. Fast shipment, painless RMA experience, easily swapped out. Haven’t gotten any crashes since then. Very happy customer.
