You all are on a good path and I don’t want to dissuade anyone from it, but one suggestion I would add is that you all disable fast startup. The reason for this is that Windows will cache startup information for a faster startup. By disabling this you allow the kernel to fully reinitialize all components.
I would recommend everyone also use the commands in this thread to disable connected standby in S0. You don’t want your laptop doing updates when it is supposed to be sleeping.
Hi David,
Apologies for the delay in getting back to you about this as our Engineering team has been looking into it further. Since you reached out, we have released BIOS and Driver updates. Can you try updating to the latest BIOS and Drivers and see if the behavior is the same or changes at all? To make it easy for you, the link for this is below;
https://knowledgebase.frame.work/framework-laptop-13-bios-and-driver-releases-amd-ryzen-7040-series-r1rXGVL16
Kind Regards
Framework Support
Framework Support,
After a few days of testing, I was able to reproduce a BSOD on the latest BIOS (3.09) and the latest driver bundle that you linked.
-David “Ren”
Hi David,
Apologies for the delay in getting back to you about this while following up with our Engineering team again.
By chance, are you able to get the BSOD screen to get to 100% completion? Additionally is there a dump file of the BSOD? If not getting to 100%, then most likely will not be a dump file; but does not hurt checking.
Lastly, are you able to share the firmware version on the SN850X? Any additional information you can share would be greatly appreciated as we continue to look into this. Hope you have a wonderful day!
Kind Regards
Framework Support
Framework Support,
Unfortunately the BSODs never progress past 0%, and no dump file is written.
I have waited 15 minutes and longer with no change to the BSOD screen. There is no .dmp file in C:\Windows and nothing in C:\Windows\Minidump
The firmware version of the SN850X is 624361WD, which the WD software reports as the most current version.
I will say that the BSODs seem to take more tries to reproduce, it is possible that the driver update has improved things.
If there is anything else I can provide please let me know. I’m not sure what else to do at this point.
-David “Ren”
Hi David,
Thank you for your patience thus far!
My engineering team was able to reproduce your issue and have filed a ticket to ensure it gets resolved. We will be tracking the ticket with AMD going forward and provide an update when we have one.
I hope to reach out again sometime next week with another update when one becomes available.
Kind Regards
Framework Support
Thanks for posting your updates here David.
Do you have any updates on this? I’m still experiencing daily BSOD. Makes me want to throw away this machine.
No I have not heard anything back in the past month.
Hi David,
We sincerely apologize for the delay in getting back to you about this while we followed up with our Engineering team and waited for a specific update. This is not an excuse as we should have given a status update during this time; and that fault is fully on us.
After following up with them and waiting for a specific update, they have provided me with a Driver Bundle update that is still in ALPHA.
v2.06 ALPHA - Download Link;
SHA256:C7A705A326F1747597A7B93597B5BB6454435B141AA91DC5E0DC79FA1E641A4F
v2.06 short update notes:
Update AMD Graphic driver to 24.30.74.
Update Fingerprint driver to 3.12804.1.270.
Additionally, we published BIOS update 3.16 to STABLE last night, so if you have not updated to that, we would recommend that as well. You can go to the following link to download and see the notes associated with it: Framework Laptop 13 BIOS and Driver Releases (AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series)
Once you complete this update, please let us know if it resolves the issue or changes the behavior in any way. Any additional information you can share with us would be greatly appreciated so I can share it with our Engineers & this be looked into further. Again, we apologize for the delay and issues this has caused you. We look forward to your response!
Kind Regards
Framework Support
Framework support,
I updated to BIOS 3.16, and I installed that 2025_08_13 driver bundle.
I then started my normal testing of putting the computer to sleep by tapping the power button, waiting at least 20 seconds, and waking the computer by touching the fingerprint sensor.
After about 30 iterations, I observed an issue where the computer could not be woken from sleep. Pressing any key on the keyboard, touching the fingerprint sensor, or tapping the power button all did nothing, and the display remained off and the power light continued slowly strobing.
The only way that I could get the computer back was to hold the power button for 10 seconds to kill power, and then boot the computer.
I have no idea if this issue is the same as the previous issue as it manifests differently and no BSOD appears. But the end result is the same in that the computer is not functional after being asleep.
The issue happened at 2025-08-22 4:45 PM PT. I’ll attach the system event logs although I don’t see any events from that time.
-David “Ren”
Hi David,
We hope you had an amazing weekend and apologize for the delay in getting back to you about this as our Engineering team has been investigating it further.
To give you a general update, our Engineer is working with AMD to determine what may be going on or what possible next steps may be. We do apologize for the time this has taken and inconvenience it has caused. Once we have further information or possible next steps, we will let you know.
In the meantime, if you have any additional questions or concerns, please let us know as we are always happy to help. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your day!
Kind Regards
Framework Support
I am having similar issues. My personal workaround: I wake the laptop up by moving my mouse or pressing any key. As soon as the laptop is up, I unlock with the fingerprint reader. With this method, I never had any failures. Therefore, I assume that the fingerprint reader (driver) might be part of the issue. I will also install the latest driver updates and report any changes.
Okay, so update from me: Did all updates (Bios & Driver package) and no change.
BCOD: Stop code critical process died (0xef), 0%. Percentage not increasing (just as TO described)
Hey everyone, just wanted to contribute my findings to this topic.
My specs:
I upgraded from my old Framework 13 in January. I basically replaced everything but the shell; so I upgraded the motherboard, RAM, SSD, and I put a new matte screen on it. The keyboard, shell, fingerprint reader, etc… are all from my original Framework 13 that I purchased in 2021.
Everything ran generally stable and painlessly. However, every so often, the computer would hitch and freeze. I noticed this in particular in two contexts: one was when using the fingerprint reader, and the would be a few seconds/minutes after log-in.
These incidents were, however, pretty rare, so I never really gave it much mind.
About three or four weeks ago, I had a period of repeated crashing. The computer would only remain stable after log-in for about 30 seconds - 2 minutes before crashing into BSOD with the error code “Critical Process Died”. It would not collect any info or generate a report and would just crash to restart at 0%.
It did this about three times in a row before booting to the BitLocker blue screen and asking for my recovery key. I put the recovery key in and got back into the system. Confusingly, I was now able to log-in and use the computer without issue.
Flashforward to yesterday. I went to use my laptop and it kept crashing. No matter what I did, it would crash 10 seconds - 2 minutes after log-in. I was sent to the BitLocker screen after a handful of repeated crashes, I’d put in the recovery key, try to log back into Windows, then it would crash again with the same error code and 0% progress.
Eventually, after one of these cases where I had to put in a BitLocker key, Windows attempted to diagnose the issue, but couldn’t connect to the network so it never really managed to help here at all.
I found this thread and read through it, before finding Long_Pham’s suggestion to bypass the fingerprint reader. Even when I opted to log-in with my pin, it would crash the exact same way.
I decided step one for trying to fix this then for me was to do a fresh Windows install, which I did. After the fresh install I was able to log-in without issue, use the computer, download the programs I like to use and sync the files I need on the computer. Got it basically up and running completely fine.
I never turned on the fingerprint reader, and have left it disabled in setting. I now only log-in with my pin as I suspected the fingerprint reader was somehow at fault here.
My suspicions were confirmed when I went to download the office suite, and Microsoft attempted to log me into my account. For whatever reason, rather than asking for my password, Microsoft attempted to turn on the fingerprint reader to verify who I was.
And, viola, the system crashed immediately with the Critical Process Died error message and 0% progress just like it did before.
Now that I’m just using my pin, the computer works fine. If it attempts anything with the fingerprint scanner, it crashes.
I don’t know if what I am experiencing is the exact same problem you are, but I am going to post here that for me the fingerprint scanner seems to be the culprit. I don’t know if Framework’s drivers got messed up by a recent Windows update or what, but I don’t seem to be the only person having this issue and it’s something Framework should look into. Not having the fingerprint scanner is honestly not a huge deal for me, but I don’t like the idea of anything that attempts to use it instantly crashing my PC.
This might finally be my excuse to use Linux, but hey, I’ve got Windows working again, so maybe I’ll put that off to another time…
Actually, scratch that. Used the laptop all morning, came home, then this evening it started crashing again, no fingerprint registered.
I think I’m gonna hop over to Linux for a bit until this is sorted. But I will keep watching this thread.
Great point. I just had the bios that I installed when I got the mainboard in January I guess. I’ll go ahead and update now to 3.16.
Edit: Updated to 3.16, no change in the issue.
Framework email from October 22, 2025:
Hi David,
We apologize for the delay while our team looked into this fruther with AMD. At this time, AMD is unable to reproduce this issue with the latest drivers on our system. If you could, can you please try the below Graphics and Chipset Driver? Before you do this, if you could notate which version it is on before updating, that information may be useful to the team as well.
AMD Chipset Driver 7.06.02.123;
AMD Graphics Driver Adrenalin 25.9.1 (WHQL Recommended);
Kind Regards
Framework Support
My response November 30, 2025:
Framework Support,
Apologies for the slow response. After the suggested updates I’m still seeing the issue.
Before I ran any updates, I had:
BIOS 3.16
AMD Chipset Driver 7.02.24.1120
AMD Graphics Driver 24.30.74
I then installed the BIOS 3.17 beta and the Driver Bundle 2.07 beta.
Afterwards, I had the following versions:
BIOS 3.17
AMD Chipset Driver 7.06.02.123
AMD Graphis Driver 25.10.2
After installing the updates I repeated my regular test cycle of putting the computer to sleep, waiting at least 25 seconds, and waking it by touching my finger on the fingerprint sensor. This worked for about 50 cycles of correctly resuming from sleep and unlocking the computer. However it did eventually run into the same issue where when resuming from sleep, the computer froze up for a few seconds, and then crashed. (See attached.) After 20 minutes of waiting the error screen had not changed (nothing was written to disk).
-Ren (FKA David)
Just posting for posterity’s sake. After my last post I uninstalled Windows and replaced it with Mint Linux. I’ve been using Mint since then without issue, including using the fingerprint scanner to unlock the device. This would seem to suggest to me the issue is not with hardware malfunction generally but is something Windows specific.
