Here’s another update from me.
I have contacted Framework Support to help them quantify the seriousness of the issue and they told me to try and unplug my USB mouse to provoke a BSOD and send the Event Viewer log to them for analyzing.
I had already started using the trackpad more and more since Friday (Feb 9th), which means it was already behaving strangely. The BSOD came not too long after I disconnected the external mouse.
I appreciate the update. In their defense, nailing down these issues without introducing further problems isn’t trivial. As an anecdote, I was one of the small number of people (and usually these issues are a vocal minority) impacted by the reduced clockspeed bug in the early batches of their 11th Gen Intel, and that took over four months to resolve as well, during which time I had a lot of back and forth with staff after going through support. In that case, IIRC ultimately progress was slow because they were unable to reproduce the issue on any of their units initially, and progress accelerated and they pushed out a BIOS update once they obtained impacted devices.
With the nature of this problem seemingly requiring using the device for a period of time before problems manifest, I’m not sure how easily they would catch it in QA/QC, so it’s probably a similar case where they’ve had to rely on obtaining impacted units from users to validate potential fixes. The initial recommendations to replace the memory or mainboard were probably as much them wanting to obtain hardware for testing as it was uncertainty surrounding the core issue.
While it sucks that I might not be able to rely on my laptop for a 3 hour event in about a month, I just need to be patient.
I hope this also won’t happen to me with my motherboard replacement https://www.reddit.com/r/framework/comments/196pc4m/comment/kq3renv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
I’m curious to know if those who recieved a replacement motherboard or laptop because of this issue are having it with their new ones.
I can equivocally say this with conviction. I will never part with my hard earned money on Framework again. I get they’re trying to disrupt the market with a refreshing change to the norm of laptops becoming ewaste with a component failure, and I fully supported them in that mission, but this whole fiasco has burned a tonne of my time in crashes and time spent liaising with support. It’s cost me hours in lost work.
If it wasn’t for The Verge highlighting the reliability issue with the 16, they would never have come forward so quick to acknowledge a fault that they suspect is track pad related with it. We’re proof of that, we’ve not had that luxury.
It’s been 4 months since this issue first showed up, there’s over 240 messages here and threads in Reddit and Microsoft answers, and we’ve yet to have an outright acknowledgement. They continue to sell a product they cannot deny has a fault, whether that’s hardware or software. We’ve been treated appaulingly and new unsuspecting customers are too parting with their money on something that simply isn’t yet fit for market. I’m not in the position where I can part with £1400 on experimental hardware, I rely on my laptop to put food on my table and a roof over my head. I don’t want other people in the same position as me to end up in this situation. This is why I feel they need to outright say “we acknowledge there’s an issue” where it can be seen before people make the decision to buy.
All we’ve had is “we’re working on a bios update, we don’t want regression” in a carefully crafted response. No apology, nothing. Like I’ve said before, had I known this was experimental, I’d not have bought it. I bought mine on a recommendation and supporting a movement doesn’t pay the bills.
@Stephen_Wright We’ve shared the true status update. We’re sorry that you’re upset, but I’m not sure what else you’re looking for at this point. Our CEO/Founder has responded, provided an honest update, and we’re currently waiting for the development team in Taiwan to return from Lunar New Year holiday break (when most of Asia shuts down). There are numerous potential causes for freezes/blue screens/DPC Watchdog Violation errors. We’ve identified one root cause that could be causing it, but when we had a Beta release candidate arrive, it contained a serious regression that we could not release as it was a blocking issue that could cause even more problems for those that installed it, which is not something we were willing to release.
We have a large number of Framework Laptop 13 (AMD Ryzen 7040 Series) laptops in the wild, and the reported issue is not widespread or affecting a significant portion of the install base. We’re very sorry that you’re experiencing an issue, but we can not, and will not release a BIOS that has known regressions. Continuing to complain on this thread, when we are currently in a holding pattern, will not allow us to release anything faster, and we ask for your patience while our team works to resolve the regression.
Thank you.
I told you exactly what I want. I want this ‘acknowledgement’ somewhere visible on your site and not hidden away in a forum thread, so consumers can make an informed purchasing decision. It’s pretty simple.
If you sell into the UK, you have to acknowledge the fault, you’re plain selling into a territory and completely disregard our legislation:
So thank you for your apology, it’s a shame it’s taken over 4 months for us to get one and more than your boss could muster
Hi @Stephen_Wright
I think that Framework is doing what they can to fix the issues.
I don’t know if you have participated to the development of any hardware (I have) and what it involves to get everything running right.
In contrary to many large hardware manufacturers who just ignore you behind unaccessible support pages, the Framework team is actually trying to identify the issue.
It is easy to identify and pinpoint the root-cause of an issue if fatal and reproducible error shows up.
It is a real PITA to identify an error that happens on a small percentage of the hardware, and is not reproducible at will. And even worth, if you have to go below the software driver layers. And it took a moment to actually figure out how to trigger it already. And in the latter case, all you can actually do is talk to the manufacturer or try to write a driver workaround that may or may not work. If you have then been able to identify that root cause, you implement a fix. And that fix, low level, can actually cause other issues. So you have to make all sorts of tests again (QA) to make sure that the fix was done right. And even large manufacturers usually have 1 or 2 persons capable of actually writing that fix.
I have had the pleasure in the beginning of the Beowulf projects to actually provide access to Donald Becker (~1996 - he wrote the majority of the network card drivers at the time for linux) to all my linux pool because I had ~100 systems, all different. That helped a lot to stabilize the network card drivers for linux at the time. Some network card bugs where not “circumventable” and not fixable. You have no idea how many buggy hardware is out there.
Now, pointing to the “legal” part here is one thing that will definitely not help. Because they already know that and do all they can already. Imagine how frustrating it is for a hardware/software developer to try to figure and identify the root cause of a bug that just won’t let itself reproduce at will.
Hi Jorg. Trust me, as a software engineer who in my previous role worked on software in the banking and broadcast media across Europe, I know how frustrating bugs can be. But also, know a bit about issue resolution and acknowledging fault to avoid reputational damage and keep our customers fully up to date in a transparent manner.
But I don’t agree they are doing all they can. Yes they’re fixing the issue and I fully understand the public holiday which is delaying things, I certainly won’t work Christmas! However my key points still stand:
I’m hoping, if anything, its a learning exercise about transparency and I’m sure many here would agree, 3 messages hidden in a thread of 248 is not transparent
I’m more appreciative of the fact that some people from Framework have now looked at this thread and responded to it. I appreciate this is still a small company trying to bring something new to a competitive market, I do feel earlier communication from support would’ve been better though and would’ve reduced a chunk of the aggro that some people have felt.
If the install base is so large (and I’m sure this is something that Support is looking into, but it is a curiosity I have) why is it predominately Ryzen Frameworks that have hit this issue and why a select few? If it’s buggy driver, I would have normally have suspected a large amount of responses everywhere. If it’s just a buggy trackpad (maybe shorting on something, or any number of reasons) then if that is identified, then at least I’m gracious of the fact the modularity of the laptop means it is user serviceable with a replacement. Have any Intel FW13s been impacted, or is this specific to AMD? And then of course why predominately Windows users affected, or is it more down to Linux handling this issue better without causing the entire OS to flip?
I will agree, very few of us suspected the trackpad as a possible culprit (usually because of all hardware failures, it tends to be either CPU, GPU, RAM or Mobo related). I don’t think I’ve ever had a mouse or keyboard ever cause a bluescreen on any other system I’ve ever used over my long history of Windows use, and that stretches back to Windows 98. Even then, my experience of troubleshooting a desktop PC is simpler than troubleshooting a laptop when the hardware is easier to tear down and you have less restrictions on what I as a user can do.
My only other frustrations with this laptop has been that sometimes my WiFi adapter can take 30 seconds or so to come back on and connect when the laptop wakes from sleep (I know there’s a workaround for power settings, but then that adds to power drain when the laptop is sleeping because it’s always active then), and sometimes I get double keystrokes when typing (unsure if this is the keyboard or me just still getting used to it). Oh an installing Windows 11 was a pig when it requires an internet connection but you can’t connect via the Wifi because the driver wasn’t installed. Fortunately had the expansion card for ethernet, but that’s a gripe at Microsoft more than anything).
Outside of the bluescreens, my experience has been overall positive and the laptop does what I need it to… which is give me a personal device that can do most of what my desktop can for when I’m travelling or just don’t want to turn my PC on for something I can do on-the-fly.
I hope Framework can just understand this has been a frustrating few months of few responses until recently, that kinda made us feel we were being fobbed off.
On a side note, switching out the Mediatek wifi adapter for the Intel AX210 significantly reduced the connection time, I switched to this in trying to narrow down the BSOD issue. Personally found power draw and speeds to be about the same, but MUCH quicker when connecting to wifi networks
Thank you for sharing, I’ll have to check out that card. The Wi-Fi connection time has been driving me nuts, but I had been blaming it on school WiFi being school WiFi.
nrp and TheTwistgibber, thank you for the updates and keeping us in the loop. I am glad to see progress, and will be happy when the fix is released.
That’s interesting to know. Maybe AMD’s networking division hasn’t caught up with their GPUs or CPUs yet 
I never thought i could get impatient over it taking 30 seconds for the wifi card to kick in but we learn something new i guess 
I have so many wifi cards hanging around here, I’ll swap these if I have issue son my FW16 when it arrives :}
and no it did not prevent the random freeze 
As far as I know, if you were installing Windows 11 fresh on an AMD motherboard, the Framework instructions for this exact process did say to use RUFUS to modify the Windows 11 image on your flash drive to avoid this very issue with the installation not proceeding due to not having the correct drivers. That being said, they should probably bring attention to this on the order page of the FW13 AMD, since it’s not completely obvious that the Windows 11 Installer doesn’t have the drivers for WiFi on the RZ616 (I personally ran into a similar problem where I had NOT installed the WiFi drivers yet and when I swapped out from the Intel to the AMD board, I couldn’t sign into my account because I didn’t have internet access 
, had to swap the Intel board back in, install the drivers, THEN swap the AMD board in again and log in).
Also yeah, I’ve been picking up on the same issue with WiFi taking a bit to turn on again after I exit hibernate mode, I still have my AX210 from when I was using my Intel board, so maybe I’ll make the switch to see if it fares any better.
My laptop is unusable it doesn’t boot anymore after 2 months this should not be the case with a new laptop that costs 1600 euro’s
This sounds like a separate issue from the blue screens. Have you reached out to support?
it happened after many lockups and bluescreens like descriped here: https://www.reddit.com/r/framework/comments/196pc4m/dead_after_6_weeks_framework_amd_13_7840/
Now I will also get a replacement motherboard bios is RIP
Progress I hope. This bios release should have the touchpad freeze fix.
