Started having this about 2 weeks ago and still have it after updating to 3.09, really sucks since I don’t use my laptop that much this time of the year but I hope it won’t appear again when I start school again this August 
Hi
I hope you are aware of the advice to charge once a week for maybe 6 hours as the RTC|CMOS battery has a designed life of around 23 days. There are reports of people getting a month but I wouldn’t rely on that.
It seems more secure to keep it well charged when you can.
Wow… 190 message long thread with not a single official response.
Thanks to everyone who cobbled up the broken and fairly useless responses from Framework Support. Really really really poor response on Framework. This will go down as the most amount of money I lost to YouTube… you-know-who not to thank!
My 11th Gen Core i7 laptop only seems to last about a day and half without being plugged in (for another 8 hours or more). Even though I can’t really find a pattern. Sometimes it will last longer.
Once it goes bust it refuses to boot up for quite a while. Obviously I have to connect it and let the RTC battery to charge up I suppose. But they fact is I don’t know if that’s what it is doing… because sometimes, holding the powerbutton down for 10 seconds will start it up. Other times no amount of holding down power button or futzing around with connecting USB C cables to left then right and left then unplugging and doing a rain dance will get it going.
So I’ve essentially dropped more than a grand for a glorified desktop with dodgy battery backup. If I wanted a desktop I would have bought an NUC (total of closer to 1900 but I guess I could reuse the memory, ssd and Windows license elsewhere).
Last resort will order a new RTC battery and see if it does any better.
At the same time my 7 year old MBP just boots up once a month, irrespective of whether it is plugged in or not!
Here is one official response that I know. There are multiple threads about this topic.
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@junaruga what’s the point? None of them have a solution or admittance of the fact that it is a major issue with no software fix possible. They are still shamelessly selling the 11th Gen “at a discount”!
As I recognized that you thought there is no “single official response”, I shared one official “response”. That’s the point.
I can understand your feeling. But when you are angry, you should recognize that nothing is changed. This issue is old. I have seen people’s reactions to this issue. And I assume that people thought about this issue and situation, and already made choices, continue to use or sell or throw away. When you sell Framework Laptop on eBay, you can still get some amount of the money back. If you sell your Framework Laptop showing this issue, you are ethical. It’s a fair trade.
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Some other reports on such short times were ultimately found to faulty button cells or defective contact clamps. The claim is that after 24 hours of being plugged it, the cell should be fully charged and maintain the CMOS for about a week when unplugged and off (I don’t know if in suspended state the main battery still provides power to the CMOS). A week is a paltry number and definitely less than I would have expected (most laptops start up without trouble after having been on the shelf for months), but workable when used as a “daily drive laptop”, where the main battery will mandate frequent plug-in anyway.
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@Nils I would be okay with that if it were predictable. It is not. I have not opened the laptop yet, I’ve ordered a new battery, let’s see if that helps with the predictability!
It happened today morning and the only thing different with today morning is I’ve worked on the laptop ‘off power’ for two evenings consecutively and it was ‘off’ power most of day yesterday. Battery was still more than 50% when I left it last night. Anyway, all my explainations are pointless. It’s a design defect and they really don’t want to acknowledge it because it will either be a mass recall or a class action if they do!
It’s not a ‘laptop’ problem but an Intel 11Gen issue which of course ‘most’ laptops don’t use.
They do acknowledge, maybe you just have read enough on the forum.
It’s not a ‘laptop’ problem but an Intel 11Gen issue which of course ‘most’ laptops don’t use.
Ahem… Most laptops’ use CR2032s that last years. Because of the Intel bug it would drain in 6 weeks. The rechargable battery was put in to avoid having to replace batteries (by ‘most other’ vendors too). Framework had a design issue because of which it drains faster than they anticipated. I’ll cut them slack for that, h/w design is incredibly complex and very hard to revert after you’ve done a production run. Admit it and move on. Geez!
Hiding behind a response deep in a 295 message thread, 7 months after original report, isn’t acknowledgement, it’s hoping that no one finds out. That’s precisely why I started a new thread!
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The only problem I’ve seen attributed to 11th Gen is that when CMOS/RTC loses power, the processor may end up in a bad state that requires a hard reset (which, at that point, is apparently requires removing the main battery as well – the CMOS battery was already depleted, so it already removed itself. That’s one part I don’t understand about the fix: didn’t the system not just spontaneously perform a hard reset to create the problem?)
I understood that the fact that CMOS/RTC draws so much power to be maintained and/or that the main battery cannot help ito keep it powered, s entirely down to Framework’s design.
The alleged silicon bug in Intel 11th Gen makes the problem much worse and some production errors in brackets/faulty button cells gave a lot more attention to the defect, but the fact that the system can fail to power on with a healthy, charged main battery after being off for just weeks is really surprising (in a bad way). That’s not normal for or expected of laptops.
Without the bug people would probably have complained less, because plugging in the laptop would hopefully immediately restore power to CMOS, so apart from some settings being wiped, the system would boot; and if a laptop has been on a shelf for a month or so, you would probably plug it in, just to be sure.
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Could you elaborate on this? Is this something available through the marketplace?
You just have to request it through support.
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Hello all,
Please do not force our hand in locking this thread. We’ve explained, in detail, what options are available for any customers that purchased Framework Laptop 13 (11th Gen Intel Core) or 11th Gen Intel Core mainboards and have an RTC Battery that has been deep-cycled to the point of no longer holding a charge.
- Contact Framework Support
- Provide Order Number or email used on order
- Provide image of mainboard with serial
- Ask for either replacement RTC Battery or RTC Battery Replacement
- If RTC Battery Replacement, you acknowledge that you have soldering experience to solder the single wire to the mainboard
If this thread goes off the rails or gets contentious, we will lock it down. This thread remains open for Community help/troubleshooting, but this is not a thread for debating the options available.
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I’m having this problem with my Framework Laptop 13 (11th Gen Intel Core). I’ve been considering upgrading my laptop using Framework’s official upgrade kit.
My question is: Will upgrading using the upgrade kit solve this problem for me? Or will I still have to look into one of the options above for the RTC battery replacement?
Follow up question: Is there a specific upgrade path that would fix the problem? (For example upgrade to AMD as opposed to Intel 13th Gen)?
Welcome to the community!
If you upgrade the mainboard, it would solve the problem. An Intel 13th gen or AMD board wouldn’t have the RTC battery issue.
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As this is a monster thread is it possible to get a tl;dr of the important information? I’ve not been able to read all of it so it’s not yet clear to me how I can determine/verify that this is the issue affecting my machine or what the difference is between the two solutions you mention.
Thanks!
Yeah, the 11th gen framework laptop has a design flaw with the RTC battery (the coin cell battery on the motherboard). There are two distinct ways the button battery can fail:
- If the laptop is left unplugged for a while, the coin cell battery will drain over time. If left for too long (sounds like a couple of weeks), then the battery will reach a low enough charge that the laptop will not boot.
- Over a longer period of time (took me 1.5 years), regardless of how often you use your laptop or how often you plug your laptop in, the coin cell battery degrades. This eventually reaches a state where your laptop will not boot.
When the coin cell battery hits this failure state, your laptop will not boot. There are two distinct possible problems that arise:
- The most common symptom is just the laptop refuses to boot unless you plug in your laptop. If this was caused by the laptop being unplugged for a while (#1 above) then you can leave your laptop plugged in for 24-48 hours to recharge the coin cell battery which should return your laptop back to a normal working state. If this was caused by the button battery degrading (#2 above), then you will need a replacement button battery.
- There is a very low percentage chance that you hit a bug (caused by Intel) where the laptop will not boot even when plugged in. If you hit this, then you have to do a motherboard reset.
Framework has offered two resolutions to these problems:
- If your coin cell battery has degraded (#2 in the first list) then they will send you a free replacement battery. This will return your laptop to a normal state but the battery will degrade just like the first one so you’ll still be at risk of this problem happening again in the future.
- If you want a permanent fix, Framework has designed a fake battery you can replace your button battery with, but this is a VERY RISKY procedure and it involves soldering. My overconfidence with this is what killed my 11th gen board, so be careful. The replacement battery doesn’t have rounded edges and the flimsy battery holder will shatter at the slightest provocation. Installing this fake battery allows your RTC circuit to be powered by the laptop’s main battery. You can browse this thread to see the graveyard of 11th gen motherboards from attempting this fix. It is strongly recommended that you hire a professional to do this fix rather than attempt it yourself.
This problem does not exist on any other framework laptops, only the 11th gen, because all their subsequent laptops have been designed to be able to boot without the button battery (and their newest laptops ship without a button battery at all).
So to put it all into a table:
| Laptop left unplugged for 1+ weeks | Button battery degraded over a long time despite frequently plugging in laptop | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Boots with a charger | Leave your laptop plugged in for 1-2 days to recharge your battery | Contact Framework for a free replacement button battery | |
| Does not boot with a charger | Perform a motherboard reset and leave your laptop plugged in for 1-2 days | Perform a motherboard reset and contact Framework for a free replacement button battery |
Finally, if you want to source a replacement button battery yourself instead of grabbing a free one from Framework Support, you want to purchase an ML1220 which is the rechargeable version. You DO NOT WANT the CR1220 (the far more common but non-rechargeable version).
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Hi and welcome to the forum.
So this old topic deals only with the 11th Gen and you do not say which laptop you have.
The above post helps clarify.
So do you have the 11th Gen ?