Troubleshooting FW16 - boot loop

Hey guys. I’m not entirely sure what might be going wrong, but I have a Framework 16 (batch 21 if it matters) and I’ve been experiencing a boot loop for the past couple of days.

Sometimes, the laptop will power on (the button light will turn on) but the keyboard and screen won’t. Sometimes the keyboard and screen come on, but the screen has an underscore in the upper left (non-blinking) and it will never proceed.

However, most of the time, the laptop will boot up - I set hardware drive encryption in the BIOS, so that menu comes up and I can put the password in without issue. The next screen comes up, says memory OK. I run Arch Linux with systemd-boot, and once I select to boot into the OS (with the main kernel selection or the fallback), the Arch Linux logo will appear, then the screen and keyboard will go dark, and it reboots all over again.

Although I’m running Arch Linux (which it is my understanding that it is not formally supported), I believe I can rule out OS or SSD related issues (which I initially believed it to be). On another laptop, I put Ubuntu on a flash drive. Booting from that flash drive brings up GRUB (much like systemd-boot would come up), but once I opted from there to boot into Ubuntu, same issue. Reboot sequence. I’ve tried booting the system with the power cable plugged in and not, too. No luck.

Memtest84+ passed with both RAM sticks in and admittedly I haven’t tried each RAM stick individually. I’ve read if it’s a CPU issue, it wouldn’t even be able to run that. I’m somewhat out of ideas - will be doing the individual sticks now, but wanted to write up a post to see if anyone had any ideas or troubleshooting steps I might be missing.

I would start off by filing a support ticket, Framework Support can guide you through your issue and if something is defective, they can provide a replacement for you. They are quite busy though, so it might be some time before you get a response.

Support will likely ask you to use an officially supported distro for testing so just keep that in mind.

You have already tried most of the troubleshooting steps, I would recommend you first try testing the memory sticks individually as you said you were planning to do. If possible, you could also try removing the SSD and just booting from a usb drive. It might be that the SSD is causing problems.

You should also check if you can get into the BIOS and adjust anything that might be wrong. If you can get into the BIOS it likely means that it is not a board issue.

1 Like