Hi, I’ve read many of these posts and I firmly believe that the problem, at least for many, is due to a battery failure. This causes sudden drops in power that disable system components, requiring a forced or automatic restart of the PC. A kernel error code 41 appears, indicating a hardware failure. I recommend checking the Windows battery activity report for any sudden drops, or trying to use the laptop without the battery. Let me know if this solves the problem.
This makes sense to me. In addition to the crashing, sometimes the screen suddenly dims briefly. Would you suggest we purchase new batteries?
Unfortunately, if the problem is with the internal battery, there’s not much you can do, so the best thing to do is buy a new one. The only alternative is that, if these sudden freezes occur from the beginning, you may be able to get a free replacement if the laptop is still under warranty. First, I recommend trying using the laptop plugged into the power supply only, without the battery, and see if that solves the problem. If the problem persists and Error 41 appears, it could indicate another hardware failure, perhaps the motherboard, although this is unlikely. Let me know how it goes without the battery and using only the power supply, and good luck!
Western Digital has ended support for their management software that can update firmware, but Sandisk Dashboard recognizes my WD branded SSDs. Once I’ve completed back-ups I will take the risk of bricking it for the team here, and apply the suggested new firmware for the SN850x
Firmware 4.0.4 flashed today did not fix it, has happened twice this afternoon. Makes this machine unworkable
Not sure if this was brought up with the recent posts but by chance was the battery at or below 25%?
If a cell is going bad in a battery pack it can behave mostly normal until it gets stressed at lower voltages in which it may suddenly just not have anything left. This causes a drop in system voltage and most mainboards see this as an out of range voltage level and the processor or watchdog timer goes into a panic and issues a restart in hopes of recovering to a stable state.
Part of the reason for this is if the system was under a heavy load, and the voltage dropped, a system reset at the hardware level can restore functionality.
It would be worth contacting support to see what their take on the situation is.
As a side note, SSDs do just suddenly stop working although it is much less common today. With spinning hard drives sometimes there was the abnormal clicking as the drive kept resyncing itself and that was the sign a failure was coming.
Sandisk bought out Western Digital a few years ago. All their support should still be accessible through SanDisk though for WD products and under warranties.
Battery was full at 80%, which is the maximum charge I currently allow in the BIOS settings. I’ll set that back to default for a while to see if that changes anything.
It’s embarrassing working on a 3D model with a client who is paying me, and my fancy laptop reboots itself when we are reviewing it. This feels graphics card related to me.
Yes I found that SanDisk Dashboard works for my WD SSDs
Well 80% is the sweet spot to leave it not too full and not discharged so no issue there. The graphics module could be at fault, is there any logs in Windows that says what went on?
Looking back at the configuration, just noticed it has the Kingston Fury memory. A little surprised it has been working, there has been some known issues with their memory and AMD boards. Primarily when the Framework Laptop 16 first came out. The AMD AI models really have an issue with this make/model of memory for some reason. Curious if the memory might be causing the issues.
Sadly, it is not easy to run out and replace the memory because it has quadrupled in price or more since it was purchased.
They are DDR5, should be fine.
If the firmware is 4.0.4, it is not the SSD firmware.
The SN850x firmware should say something like:
Model Number: WD_BLACK SN850X 1000GB
Firmware Version: 620361WD
So, maybe you have not upgraded the SSD / NVME firmware.
No I haven’t updated the SSD firmware yet. I’m still backing it up in between unplanned restarts.
I have two crucial SODIMMs in my daughters Framework 13, I could swap in as well in an attempt to eliminate the memory as an issue, but I’m not the only one running Kingston DDR5 on a Framework 16 7040
Not all DDR5 memory is the same. This particular line of memory has a history of issues with Framework devices with AMD chips.
Not saying that is the case here, however it has been an issue for others with the same setup. They changed memory and the issue went away. Just another thing to consider.
@David_Poole
Are you using windows or linux?
If you are using linux there is a workaround for the aer errors.
Up-to-date Win 11, although it seemed more stable with the previous version honestly.
AI boards not the 7040 to my knowledge
At this point I seemed to have solved the problem, but after updating nearly every driver and firmware, I’m forcing apps to use the APU instead of the GPU, so it seems the graphics card has a bug.