I have bought the DIY edition four/five months ago. I run arch linux with xfce4, I also have the latest bios they recommended. This is a weird problem that started about two months ago. One day my laptop refused to boot and only gave a blank screen without the framework splash screen. I tried pressing the power button again, weirdly when I did the screen flashed 3 times and shown the shutdown sequence. I checked the lights to see if there was a code but the lights are never consistent either, sometimes they blink once, twice, four times, eight times, ect.
I brought this to tech support and they gave me a guide to reset the board which I followed to the t. and it fixed it for a few weeks. When it happened again I contacted support and they gave me a guide to connecting a “dummy charger” while charging it, which turned out to be unrelated to my problem.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to see if I can recreate the problem and if there was anyway I could quickly fix it. I have never found out the cause, other than it’s just random. One of the fixes I’ve found was fully charging it then leave it unplugged for a few hours, and then it will boot normally. Another weird fix is waiting on the blank screen for half a minute then type my password like I’m logging in, the screen will flash 3 times but then show my desktop.
I’m not sure if this is still a CMOS battery issue like a lot of people are having. It could be a software issue but I’m not sure if it the bios firmware, linux, or even a problem with lightdm-gtk-greeter. Has anyone else experienced this mess? This has been nothing but a huge headache, I would have already returned it if it wasn’t for the failure being right outside the warranty period.
Did you check not running the latest BIOS?
Did you try older releases?
“[…resetting the board] fixed it for a few weeks.”
That’s the key, guess you got to figure out what happened in these few weeks.
Does this reset fix your issues always for some time? What did this reset include? Rolling BIOS and Firmware back from a backup storage on the mainboard?
I’d try another GNU/Linux distribution without rolling release, with fixed releases like Fedora or Ubuntu and would definitely try different BIOS versions.
"One of the fixes I’ve found was fully charging it then leave it unplugged for a few hours, and then it will boot normally. "
That kept me thinking. Can you remove the battery and operate the Framework without it, only hooked up on AC power?
“Another weird fix is waiting on the blank screen for half a minute then type my password like I’m logging in, the screen will flash 3 times but then show my desktop.”
Did you disable the start of X or Wayland at boot time and boot only into a TTY login prompt?
Did you check the logs with dmesg, in /var/log or with journald? Can you share the logs?
To me this sounds like it could be software. I would try another distro, or even another WM/DE. If the system is booting and the screen is just not initializing, being able to log in would still be possible.
Just remember Arch is custom for a reason. OSes are extremely complicated. Best to rule the OS out of the equation by trying either Fedora or Ubuntu on it.
First off thanks for all the replies this has helped me go in the right direction. before I do any more testing I have to back up everything and get my old laptop for a spare in the meantime. I’ve been totally swamped so it might take me awhile to get around to all of the suggestions, but here’s what I got so far.
I originally had this problem when I was still running 4.06 and is still persistent with 4.07
I haven’t done that yet but I can get the screen to ‘wake up’ when I move to another tty after boot, so I’m thinking it might have something to do with x11
I haven’t found anything interesting in it but I’ll paste it when I get a chance.
I will when all else fails, I’m at least going to try to find the root cause so I can potentially help someone else having this same issue.
