System locked up again whilst using firefox and whatsapp. Happened the very moment I pushed down on the mousepad to click. Hope it gets fixed soon, I won’t be buying anything framework in the future and telling everyone I know to stay away from framework until it is.
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It’s hugely infuriating. Here in the UK we have very stringent laws on consumer goods. I’ve raised this issue with Trading Standards, it’s simply unacceptable. Consumers shouldn’t be expected to part with £1400+ for a product that’s simply not fit for purpose.
I’m not exactly sure what support would have me do that I already haven’t done. Already reseated and tested my RAM in Memtest86 for multiple passes with no errors, as well already having swapped my old SSD with a brand new one and still facing crashes. Also tried multiple driver versions for Adrenaline and the AMD chipset drivers. I’ve tried everything short of a fresh install of Windows. There is also the fact that a potential BIOS fix is up in the air, which suggests that there is a chance this issue is widespread, therefore there is legitimately no guarantee that even if support gave me a new mainboard (unlikely) my issues would be resolved. Hence I don’t see the point in reaching out to them.
Not to mention, some users like @TossedTripod645 were just told their “unsupported RAM” was the issue, and given I am also using RAM and an SSD that I did not purchase from the Framework store, I doubt my experience with them will be anymore positive.
If there’s a suspected fix, how about a beta firmware release in the meantime? Clearly us AMD FW13 users were just a beta test for the FW16 which is where all the attention seems to be anyway, so what’s another beta release on top of that?
Does Framework understand at all how frustrating this is for their customers? It’s been 4 months at this point, and this crash still happens regularly. Prior to this I would have recommended Framework to everyone because I love the concept, but at this point I’d recommend a company that has the resources to actually stand behind their products.
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I’m sure they are well aware of the frustration. Their staff do read these forums regularly. Sometimes it’s not as simple as just fixing it despite how badly everyone wants it to be fixed. Surely you don’t want a half baked solution that makes the problem worse. I get that it’s frustrating but they’ll release a fix when they’re able to find the root cause.
I’d still much rather support a small company any day. Big companies have similarly frustrating experiences. For example, Apple has straight up ignored a problem with charging any iPhone X model with newer apple silicon devices for over two years. Their most common recommendation, “oh, just buy a new iPhone and you’re problem will be solved.”
Whether they do read it or not, most frustration is down to the lack of regular responses or updates from Framework, or an “We’re aware of user reports of Bluescreens, we’re currently investigating the issue”
You’d normally suspect hardware fault if it is one, but this is an entire line of laptops all reporting issues, which mean it’s a common problem. This thread has been open since November, and it took until January 8th for a response from a Framework staff member. I get that they’re a small company, and I get this is a very non-specific error (Windows could do with making troubleshooting a cause probably easier for end-users), and that it occurs randomly rather than having a specific issue, but having so many users affected would kinda also make you think their quality control processes would’ve at least caught an issue or two and flag something up?
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My frustration stems from the fact that the FW16 and it’s cause of blue screens was quickly handled by Framework once The Verge released a scathing review of the laptop, yet here we are with our FW13, facing this issue since November, no resolution in sight. The lack of communication is not helping, like I don’t even need the fix to come ASAP, but I’d like regular updates regarding their findings or not.
So far my experience is suggesting that the FW16 is the priority, and the FW13 is currently unimportant and on the backburner since it’s not the laptop currently getting media attention.
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for one, letting support officially know that you are dealing with this issue instead of just posting here will give them official numbers on how important this issue is. They do monitor these threads, but they can’t be expected to count up every report across support, this forum, reddit, discord, or any other places users would be talking about this.
That said, I am sure they are trying to figure this out, but they only have so many people who can handle 12th gen intel BIOS, Framework 16 Release, and this issue, and priorities have to be chosen. I’m sorry your product isn’t at the top of the list, but they’ll be able to get to it eventually. NRP answering here is proof that Framework is aware of this issue, so that’s good.
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I mean it shouldn’t be the customer’s fault that they now do not have resources for the issue they ignored for 4 months until the FW16 launched and The Verge wrote about it, and now they’re ignoring because the FW16 is the priority. If they were actually investigating this 4 months ago maybe they’d have avoided the crunch of timelines here.
They clearly bit off more than they can chew from a resource standpoint and that’s exactly my point why I can’t recommend them. They don’t have the resources to adequately support their brand new, still under warranty product.
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You’ve hit the nail on the head with this one. Exactly this
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The thing with my RAM issue was that no matter the amount of mem tests I ran it never ever once pointed to it being a ram issue. Only once I ordered the cheap 8GB SK hynix stick off of ebay did my problems with both of my DDR5 laptops go away.
The BIOS release for Framework Laptop 13 (AMD Ryzen 7040 Series) that has the same change we made on Framework Laptop 16 is currently in internal testing. We found a boot related issue and are working through whether this was a new regression or an issue specific to the debugging mainboard that was used for testing. Note that our manufacturing partner is currently on lunar new year holiday, so testing on their end is paused. This BIOS release is still our highest priority sustaining software release, and the one that the team’s primary focus is on. We want to make sure that when we release software updates, that they not only solve the issues we intend to solve, but also avoid introducing any regressions.
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It’s been awhile since I provided an update on my situation.
I don’t know if my problem is resolved, but my laptop has been stable for a couple of days through usage scenarios that would normally trigger the issue. Caveat being that if I had reproducible steps than I’m sure we would all be super happy.
Currently my configuration is
- Latest version of Windows 11 Pro
- All available updates are applied
- Two sticks of ram are installed. One was RMA’d
- CPUID indicates the ram is running at 2800mhz
- This is Framework’s RAM, but as discussed in this thread, that does not seem to be important.
- BIOS is 3.03
- DDU was run to remove AMD drivers provided by the Framework driver package
- AMD Driver pack for the 7840U installed from AMD’s website.
- Radeon 24.1.1
This has left (and continues to leave) one device without a driver in Device Manager. So far, not having this device loaded has not impacted my normal workflows or usage of the device. If someone knows what this device is, happy to learn more.
I am currently soaking this configuration to see if I can trigger the issue, will report back in ~1 week (or sooner, murphy’s law says 5min after posting this update, if I see another BSOD)
The unloaded device
Thanks for the update @nrp. Hopefully the BIOS, through enough testing, resolves the issues and lets this long thread of complaints come to a nice conclusion.
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Understandable regarding the need for stability in the new update, as well as the testing team being out of office due to the Lunar New Year, I hadn’t even taken that into account.
Thank you for the update @nrp, much appreciated. Wishing you guys the best of luck.
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after updating to the latest amd adrenaline and amd chipset drivers my system has been running much more stable - no recent lockups resulting in a BSOD or hard power off in the last two weeks.
I have noticed that I get frequent popups from the AMD adrenaline software saying that the driver had crashed and restarted, perhaps these correspond to instances that would have originally been complete freezes.
There is zero chance they “ignored” this for four months. not only were 12th gen BIOS fixes being worked on long before this issue ever came up, but they were also working on getting the initial FW16 BIOS out, not to mention they were working on the first FW13 AMD BIOS update to fix issues for this mainboard that they found in testing.
To act like Framework intentionally avoided working on this hard freeze issue is ignoring all the other variables in the equation. I’m again sorry that you’re dealing with this, I have had issues with this too, but I also had the experience of being an early adopter of the 11th gen Laptop, so I knew that I was in for potential issues. I would agree that the AMD Framework is not something to recommend at this time, but to write off the whole company because they are struggling to adapt to new CPUs and not giving them the benefit of the doubt because they have historically always done their best to help their customers is a bit unfair. If you don’t like the treatment you’re getting here, then fair enough, take your business and recommendations elsewhere.
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they were also working on getting the initial FW16 BIOS out, not to mention they were working on the first FW13 AMD BIOS update to fix issues for this mainboard that they found in testing.
To act like Framework intentionally avoided working on this hard freeze issue is ignoring all the other variables in the equation.
One, they didn’t acknowledge the issue until they noticed an issue with the FW16. We were told it was memory or the mainboard needed a replacement until all of a sudden the FW16 had an issue identified by the tech media. And because that one was affecting preorders, all of a sudden it was something that actually got investigated.
But also, there’s literally zero difference in these two things you’re saying. They decided the FW16 was more important. That means they intentionally put less focus on the FW13 AMD. It doesn’t matter that there were other variables of what Framework chose to do. The end result is the same thing.
On top of that, you point out that this is not even unique. 11th gen, 12th gen, AMD13, and the FW16 have all been botched launches, demonstrating again that this company who I want to support simply does not have the resources they need to get this right.
That being said, I’m happy to hear the latest update from nrp today. If there had been transparency like this all along, I doubt I’d be as irritated by it. But since we can’t go back and fix that, hopefully the next time an issue comes up someone will be more proactive in the communication.
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Thanks for the update! Wish your team good luck in getting to the bottom of this!
You have to take into account that the core of this issue was very difficult to find out. “Random Freezes” with BSOD can be anything. So Framework need to follow best practices to investigate that Problem. And you do that by sorting out the variables. Framework didn’t told you, that the RAM or Mainboard need replacement to fix this, they needed to sort out those variables to find the core of this problem.
To claim Framework did only start to care until the Verge was writing articles about it is completely ignoring the fact the Verge was the first one tracking down the problem to the trackpad. Not a single person here in the forum was even considering that this is a trackpad related issue before their article went live.
And it is way to simple to just say that they didn’t put enough resources on it. As a company you have to taggle different problems with different priorities, but throwing 100 man on a single problem sometimes solves nothing. So a not perfect product shouldn’t prevent you from stepping forward and gain experience. Very often you get a better understanding of what you did wrong in the past by facing new challenges. I mean there is a good chance that without the FW16 release we might still have no clue at all what the root cause of the freezes is.
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