I’m using Fedora 43 on a Framework Desktop AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128GB.
Last night I received an option to update the BIOS via the Discover software updating service in Fedora. However, around the same time, I had an external HD attached to back up some files, and the file manager window for the HD froze and became unresponsive. I tried safely removing the HD, but it said it was still in the process of transferring files, despite the process seemingly being frozen / crashed. I didn’t seem to have any option but to reboot at this point.
After reboot, the computer became unresponsive. The light on my external HD continued flashing a while (which usually indicates it’s in the process of file transfer), but eventually became solid (which is its state during no file transfer). I unplugged the HD at this point but left everything else as-is.
I left it on over night and tried again this morning. The screen is black but when I type on the keyboard, I see characters being printed to the upper left of the screen, but that’s it. The computer itself still has lights on and the fan intermittently runs.
I’ve encountered this behavior before and simply powering down the computer and powering on again has resolved the issue in the past. But I’m hesitant to do so now because of the BIOS update that was supposed to be happening, but also don’t really know what other options I might have at this point. I just want to avoid bricking the device if that’s potentially in play. Any advice is really appreciated.
It looks like one option might be to do a mainboard reset as described at Mainboard Reset - Framework Guides . Is this a good option for me in this situation? I’m assuming this would only reset the BIOS to factory settings but leave everything else about the computer intact, so I could start running it again from the factory setting BIOS?
Resetting the mainboard should not have adverse effects on the system. Contact support if it has not been done already. We are just end users on the forums here.
First rule of doing anything BIOS related: never have anything else going on when flashing any form of BIOS. It is a good idea to disconnect anything unnecessary as well just to ensure nothing is talking across the very ports it might be updating the firmware code for.
Read up on how to do the UEFI bios updates via a USB, that may be the only way to reflash or finish updating whatever didn’t get updated the first time.
Support will likely have a better troubleshooting path as they are the experts with Framework hardware.
If the computer is frozen during file transfer, the files may be corrupted. Remove the external HDD and the internal SSD, use a live Fedora 43 image on a thumb drive and try to boot there and see if there’s any problem. If the BIOS is updating there should be readable indication on the screen, if you suspect the BIOS update did go as planned you can use the EFI method to update the BIOS again.
Thanks both for the input, very much appreciated. Yeah, normally I’d be more cautious about isolating a BIOS update from other tasks, but I just got a bit jumbled this time around trying to juggle a lot of different tasks.
I did also contact Framework support and they advised me to (1) do a mainboard reset, (2) update the BIOS with the UEFI shell method described at Framework Desktop BIOS and Driver Releases (AMD Ryzen™ AI Max 300 Series) . After the mainboard reset, my Framework Desktop booted successfully and everything seems to be running normally. I’m holding off on the BIOS update for now to address the issues in my file backup system first.