Hello, I just got my new Framework 16 laptop and this is not going as well as I’d hoped. I was in the middle of installing my OS of choice and it shut down. I had it plugged in the entire time. I booted it up again and it stayed on for a while, but then shut down again. To rule out everything I could I left it on at the bios setup screen with nothing plugged in (except for power), and it still shut down. Currently, the laptop will only stay on for about 23 seconds before it shuts off again. Do I have a defective product, or is there something I can do to remedy this unfortunate situation?
Edit: since I didn’t specify above, I am using the official power adapter from Framework.
Update: I’m trying what was suggested for a charging issue. Plugging in my cellphone charger causes the charging light to turn on. The Framework power adapter was doing this previously, but it stopped turning the light on. I have no idea what the wattage of my cellphone charger is.
Update 2: Syncing with suggestions from support, I have so far tried:
re-seating RAM
re-seating SSD
re-seating expansion bay (this one was from Reddit)
moving the RAM to slot 1 (it was in slot 0)
removing all expansion cards and turning on with no power plugged in
removing all expansion except one USB-c and turning on with power plugged in
waiting for a bit, then trying most of that again, just in case my luck changes
I have not yet tried crying - that option is still on the table.
Nope, no magnets. I haven’t gotten an OS installed yet. I was installing Archlinux and got as far as getting my partition layout the way I wanted and running pacstrap - no bootloader or anything, so effectively no OS is installed. I’m not sure what logs I might look at, but if the bios has logs it would be difficult to read them because the laptop will turn off too soon.
Try removing all devices except ram.
Pcie devices: ssd, wifi card.
Side expansion slot cards except the charger.
Battery (carefully, it’s connector is easily bent)
See if it stays on for longer.
Can you hear any fans running? This is a difficult one, because at boot up in the fw16 they are off and only turn on when the cpu is warm, but if the fans don’t start when they should, it might shut itself down in response.
The ram is probably fine as it got as far as bios.
What make/model is the ram, ssd?
Do you have the 7700 gpu option?
To save you putting the input cover back on when testing, you can use USB keyboards to get into the BIOS.
Hello, thanks for your replies. I’ve tried running without any of these things connected. With no battery, the laptop does not turn on at all even with the power plugged in (tried both the framework adapter and a 70W macbook adapter which I’m borrowing). With the battery plugged in, the laptop will turn on only if the 70W macbook charger is plugged in and only for a couple of seconds before shutting down again. I’ve verified that the fans do start spinning. I’ve been using ports 1 and 4 primarily, but I did try other ports as a troubleshooting step.
port 4 I believe. The port closest to the fans on the right side. The charge light is now blinking with the macbook charger plugged in rather than a steady on.
It should be OK in port 4. I think you have a faulty fw 180W powerbrick.
The FW16 should power on normally with battery disconnected. At least my FW16 works with no battery connected.
So, leave the battery disconnected and double check all the powerbrick cables are in tight at the brick. If it still does not work, ask for a RMA power brick.
That’s what I thought as well. I tried getting another power adapter to try. The highest wattage I could find was a 140W macbook charger, so not quite as high but I figured good enough for idle consumption. Behavior is the same as with the 70W one I was trying earlier; it still doesn’t stay on for more than a few seconds. Unfortunately this leaves me with more questions than answers. Should the laptop be able to stay on at 140W?
@Eric_Dube
When you say “doesn’t stay on for more than a few seconds”, is that the charger going on/off/on/off etc. or is the laptop only powering on for a few seconds?
My guess is the only power the laptop is seeing is from the battery, which is probably low now, which is why I suggested you disconnect the battery and then find out which charger works. Once you find a working charger, to power the laptop without a battery, you can then use that one to charge the battery.
One problem is the FW laptop is a little fussy regarding which chargers it accepts.
The FW16 180W supplied one obviously having the best chance of working, but your one looks to be broken.
The laptop is only staying on for a few seconds. The state of the charger seems unaffected. I now have the batter unplugged and the 140W Apple charger plugged in. The charge light is now alternating between “amber” (which I now realize is red, it just looks that way from outside) and blue. Do you know where I can find any reference for what that means? I didn’t install the mid frame back yet, I wanted to do a quick test first.
30 seconds after 30 minutes charging on the 140W. Also, I got the “input modules not detected” screen this time (this is new) despite all the input modules being connected. I tried taking them off, re-seating the plug labelled “1” on the midframe, and putting all the panels back on, and I got the same thing again. What could cause that?
edit: a subsequent boot (no re-seating) worked, but I wasn’t quick enough to get to this feature. Now it’s back to turning off in under a few seconds.
I’ve seen the fans spinning. They don’t make a lot of noise but it doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with them. It’s been relatively hot where I live (low 30s, Celsius) but the laptop itself isn’t getting hot (and doesn’t seem to have time to get hot).
I’ve contacted support. They’re definitely handling this much slower than I’d like. I feel like I shouldn’t really be expected to troubleshoot anything here (it’s brand new, and defective out of the box, so this absolutely should be a no-bullcrap “return and get a new one” type of deal) but I’m very curious to find out why it’s like this. Especially because otherwise, say I get a replacement, now I’ll be constantly in fear that this will randomly start happening again.
Support just got back to me and asked me to try checking the battery icon in my operating system… I don’t even have the words to express how I feel right now (really; I just re-wrote three sentences trying to). Is there a way to expedite the replacement process?
This problem is a difficult one to solve.
The symptoms you are seeing have had many different causes.
Looking at other threads here.
For one person it was a wifi card failed. For another it was intermittent fault on the RAM, and another it was the mainboard.
Unfortunately, the diagnosis of the mainboard without RAM is difficult as there is no screen output without working RAM.
But none of those other cases had problems charging.
So, a bit of a guess, but I would suggest RMA of the mainboard and RMA FW16 power brick because we cannot really tell which is at fault.
