Framework Laptop 16 massive instability

Community Support
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1

Hey all, could really use some help with this one as its way beyond me at this point. I’m having some massive crashing and boot looping problems with my Framework laptop 16 (7040 with the 7700 GPU) which I tool delivery of in July 2024. It started about a week ago, when it started having these hard lockups, where the screen would freeze, and the laptop would become totally unresponsive, sometimes if audio was playing it would continue, sometimes it would not. Sometimes right before these lockups it would have little hitches where it locked up then recovered, before fully locking up a minute later. I tried a few things to fix this, namely ensuring the drivers were up to date, and making sure everything was fully seated, but no luck.

It’s since gotten much worse. Most of the time now, I can’t even get it to post, I’ll hit the power button, it will light up, fans will spin, the power button will dim, then go off. No screen activity. Repeat perpetually. When it’s in this state, half the time I can’t even get it to hard shutdown. It will seam to, then start the look again after maybe 30 seconds. Sometimes, I’ll hit the power button, and it will stay on, fans spinning, but that’s in. No logo on screen and no more activity. I’ve left it like this for hours in case it was memory training, but no luck. Sometimes I’ll get it to post, but then windows doesn’t load, just staying on the framework logo forever. Sometimes it boots without a hitch, works for anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours before locking up again. Sometimes it boots again after a forced shutdown, sometimes not. If I try a manual shutdown when it’s booted, sometimes it works, sometimes it seams to work, fans stop, but the power button light never goes off.

I swear I’ve tried just about everything I can at this point. I’ve tried removing just about every component, tried each stick of ram individually(using slot 0, I think that’s the right one) trying it without the wifi card, my 2nd ssd, and even the boot drive to see if it will at least post. I’ve done a fresh install of latest version of Windows 11, updated drivers and bios, as well as the keyboard firmware. The only thing I’ve noticed is that I seem to have more like getting it to boot after a long rest period, like overnight, but that could just be coincidence. Would really appreciate any help with this, it’s a fucking weird one and I think I’m at the limit of my diagnostic capabilities.

Full specs

Framework laptop 16

Ryzen 7 7840hs

Amd Radeon 7700s

2x crucial 16gb ddr5 sticks (32gb total)

Intel ax1200ngw wifi card

Boot drive: sp pcie gen 4x4 2tb 2230 m.2

2nd drive, crucial p3.pluss 4tb 2280 m.2

Still using the liquid metal, haven’t bothered changing it out for the ptm yet

2

Sorry to hear; that’s a drag.

Things to check/try:
Are there any messages of note in event viewer?
Run memtest (overnight if possible)
Boot a live linux iso and see if things are any more stable - ventoy is your friend here
Monitor temperatures of components when the system is running - it’s possible that the liquid metal is all at the edges of the chip and the system is thermally shutting down.

Swapping out the LM for PTM is worth it. I did the whole PTM-shim sandwich thing, thanks to others here who forged the way, but you don’t have to go to that extreme. The 16” is running moderately hard most days and so far so good.

Best of luck getting back to a stable system.

3

When you do manage to boot it. How is the battery.
Can you use “ectool battery 0” or similar to read the battery details and charge level.
The battery might have partially failed.
Try booting without the battery installed.

I think the mainboard has failed, so raise a support ticket with FW via their web form.

4

nothing in event viewer. I have considered it being thermal because of how it tends too boot better after sitting, so ill try and keep an eye on it

5

Had it running for a solid hour while monitoring thermals. crashed at 56ºC on the cpu, 32º on the gpu