Yeah, this is what happened to mine too. Mainboard resets became a routine part of my boot process if I let it power down for longer than a minute (even after letting it sit on the charger all week). Laptop used to work fine for 10 months until I left it unpowered/unused in my backpack for a month, which I assume killed the RTC battery.
My workaround was to avoid turning off the laptop and always travel with the screwdriver and a SIM eject tool handy for booting.
If you’ve performed the mainboard reset, let it charge for 24 hours, and are not consistently leaving it unused/not on a charger for weeks/months, and are seeing the reset consistently, please contact Support. Either the battery can no longer hold voltage or there’s something wrong with the RTC cradle. The Support agents have updated instructions to assist, even outside of the warranty period.
Interesting, but unplugged for 6 days max just sounds too short. I mean, when brand new, how many days did these laptops spend in inventory and shipping to customers? Why did that time unplugged not kill the RTC?
I enjoyed 10 months of hassle-free use after my laptop’s delivery, and it sure felt like I waited a long time for it to arrive at my door.
UPDATE: Nirav’s update on this is here with links to the datasheets: Viability of an ML 1220 rechargable battery for RTC | CMOS (11th gen) - #453
Just to provide an update, this is being tracked down in coordination with our team in Taiwan as we want to make sure we’re providing the most accurate information. I’ll update here once I have the appropriate information to share. Thanks for your continued patience.
Today my ML1220 died (it seams to leak “dust” and settings are not saved, when switched off and it starts twice until it boots). I have not found it anywhere, can anybody tell me where to buy a replacement in germany?
Is this issue fixed with Gen 12 mainboards?
Hi all, as @TheTwistgibber noted, we have been reading through this thread carefully and listening to everyone’s feedback. There are a couple of actions we’re going to take to improve the experience for 11th Gen users who are finding that they need to reset their mainboard every few weeks or more often. Note that for the vast majority of 11th Gen users, who are using their laptops more often than every few weeks or months or who keep their laptop plugged into power when not in use, there should be no impact or need to engage on these actions.
First, if you’re finding that you’ve needed to perform the Mainboard reset procedure more than a few times on your 11th Gen system after long periods of non-use, we will provide you with a free replacement RTC battery, even if you are outside of your warranty period. We will continue to do this for as long as we are able to get supply of these cells.
We’ve uploaded the datasheets for the two cells that our manufacturing partner had been sourcing for us during 11th Gen production. The key callout is that while cycle life is reasonable during normal shallow discharges, doing a full 100% discharge of the coin cell more than 10-12 times results in serious capacity degradation. From what we have seen, this is typical of Manganese Lithium coin cells, but we are reaching out to other coin cell makers to see if anyone has parts that handle deep discharge better.
Note that because these are bare Lithium Ion cells, they require very careful shipping to comply with transportation safety regulations. We’re working with our shipping carriers in each region to set up compliant shipping paths, so it may take some time for us to turn on shipments of these coin cells for all supported shipping regions. We have a small quantity of cells in the US currently, and we’re working on sourcing more of these from our suppliers, which similarly will take time due to lead times and handling requirements. Note also that we are only able to ship these cells to our supported shipping regions. We will also be listing the coin cell on the Marketplace for folks who are interested in purchasing them outside of this replacement process.
After you receive your replacement RTC cell, please make sure to let it fully recharge by keeping your laptop plugged into power for at least 72 hours. We also recommend keeping your laptop plugged into power during long periods of non-use to avoid letting the RTC battery fully discharge. Note that even a normal 5V/900mA USB-C power adapter will sufficiently trickle charge the system and RTC cell. Finally, we also recommend keeping your system up to date with the latest firmware releases. We’ve recently released 3.17 BIOS for 11th Gen.
While the above is available to all 11th Gen customers, we have an additional item that we do not recommend except for those who have both advanced soldering equipment and advanced electronics rework experience. This is a circuit modification for 11th Gen Mainboards to charge the RTC battery circuit at all times as long as the main battery is connected, even when the system is off. With this modification, the RTC battery can actually optionally be removed. This modification will make the 11th Gen similar to 12th Gen Mainboards where the RTC circuit is powered and charged directly off of the main battery. Note that because this is an advanced and difficult rework, this is not something we will be providing additional support around or warranty replacement in the event that you damage your board in the process of performing the rework. We will only be providing the instructions for doing the rework. We are currently writing this as a Knowledge Base article and will post in this thread once it is up.
Very interested to know what the rework will be. Great that FW is making this an option but I’m feeling like we will see mainboards with ripped pads.
This is exactly what I hoped to hear, thank you!
Okay 24 hours on charge. Unplugged the power and it fired right up.
I’ll leave it 48 hours and see it if powers up again.
While I’m waiting for the replacement mainboard for the replacement mainboard (hasn’t shipped yet, confirmed on the 4th but… crickets, still just “confirmed”, not sent. Initially figured it might be chinese holidays, but I’ve seen reports of people ordering laptops after that and already having them), I have a question: does this mean it might be a good idea to remove the coin cell in case a longer time away from wall power is expected? (Eg. if replacing the 11th gen with a 12th, but intending to use the 11th gen board for something else “whenever you get time”. In my case, it would probably become a Proxmox box to replace my raspberry pi stack, but no time for that now.)
Throughout my support experience, it’s been a bit weird to be told to be extremely careful with replacing the cell because the cradle is fragile - but let’s have you take it out for the 5th time as part of troubleshooting. 
If that is the case, this might be good to document somewhere. Since the 10-12 times can be reached fairly fast for a board you use in learning projects.
Figured I’d check in since recent developments in this topic: As promised, support was understanding and ready to send a replacement ML1220. The FDK battery from Amazon continues to work well, but I feel putting the manufacturer sourced cell in is the best option in the long run. Once it’s arrived, installed, and charged, I’ll check back in.
I promise I won’t blow up your forum notifications anymore, but thanks again to @nrp and @TheTwistgibber for your attention here. Sincerely appreciated.
I might, though…
@TheTwistgibber a question. I just got my ticket escalated to logistics, since the replacement for the replacement isn’t shipping, it’s just stuck in “confirmed”. Given that support previously was under guidance that cell replacement is not a thing and mainboard replacements are what does it. (And appear restricted in their ability to give anything but the copy-paste answers to questions.)
Then the replacement mainboard was a desktop. Then the replacement for the replacement doesn’t end up shipping at all… Guidance seems to now have changed after my case started back in November, so is this a situation where the “correct” option for my original issue is actually to just get my original board one of the replacement cells and let’s be done with it? (I’d otherwise have been tempted to request an annulment of the whole purchase.)
At this point I am really at a loss of words because this crap is taking so darn long to reach any kind of conclusion, but luckily for Framework I’ve grown fond of the 3:2 screen ratio (great with a vertical split in vim while coding) and there’s a dearth of options in that form factor that aren’t soldered down.
Given the information shared recently, it really seems like my case could have been solved all the way back then. But not knowing whether this recent change affects the whole “we looked at your pictures of the RTC cradle and will replace the mainboard” I’ve gotten twice…
Yay! This kind of honest and open communication about this issue is I think what most people were looking for here. Excited to see the bypass work instruction and fire up my Pinecil!
Your ticket has already been escalated to our Logistics team for review as the order is in the proper state, we have the inventory in Taiwan, but for whatever reason, it hasn’t transitioned to shipped. Our Logistics team will be reaching out to our 3PL partner in Taiwan to understand why it hasn’t shipped.
RTC Battery replacement, per Nirav’s post, is currently not available for European countries as we do not yet have stock of those batteries in our repair center in Germany. We only have a small number of batteries at our US repair center for United States and Canada at this time. Per his post, we have to ask for patience as these batteries are considered hazardous materials, international regulations require special handling, and we have to navigate all of this after we have inventory sourced and ready to ship.
I understand you are frustrated, but the latest information from Nirav is indeed the most recent guidance. We’re working on figuring out why your mainboard didn’t ship, but unfortunately this requires coordination with multiple 3rd parties as we don’t own the pipeline, we have partners.
Thank you for your patience.
@Daniel_Agorander I just received word that there was a labeling issue at our 3rd Party Logistics partner which has just been corrected, and your mainboard should ship out on Monday.
The amount of times I’ve read that line these last two months…
But well, I was more curious about the aspect of “could it have been”. That is: IF there was stock in Germany, would it potentially have been the correct option? Or in other words: is it possible that the findings that led to a decision to replace the mainboard would now (if stocks were in place in the relevant region) instead be handled through issue of a new coin cell?
(Basically trying to understand what’s going on, since initially there was a “replace coin cell is not recommended”, and replacement decisions seemed to coincide with best-effort photos taken with my unfortunately quite shitty Nokia phone camera, but I’m nowhere near qualified to understand if my situation is even relevant to the whole coin replacement thing or if I was just that one guy that had really shitty luck with the coin cradles. 
)
That’s good news. Fingers crossed for that board and thanks! 
We were given guidance since the beginning to not go down the replacement RTC battery route given the spec for our mainboard, the inconsistency in batteries that exist globally, and the possibility that someone could do real damage to the mainboard via a bad replacement battery (or even installing one that isn’t rechargeable given that would be very bad). This is why we are now sourcing verified compatible ML1220 batteries and providing them once the proper troubleshooting has ruled out all other possible root causes. This was a cross-functional discussion internally that led to this course of action, and Nirav, our CEO/Founder gave the approval to execute. While it may seem that something is simple from the outside, unfortunately, it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Oh, that’s a given, nothing is ever simple.
So I guess my only remaining question is: if we do expect to not use a board for a while, is removing the coin cell an option we might consider? Mainly due to the below:
If I were to upgrade to 12th gen, and therefore stash my 11th gen for whenever I have time to turn it into a Proxmox box, is removing the coin cell a good option to this guidance? I’d assume yes, but… just in case. (I do code, not electronics, so… )
Anyway, thanks for the information and for looking into my issue.
@Daniel_Agorander Yes, you can remove the battery, it will just default to requiring the AC adapter to be plugged in as the RTC battery is required in order for the laptop to know which power path to accept (main battery or ac adapter). Before you do though, make sure you perform the reset.
Okay update.
Had the laptop 25 hours on charge. It powered up. It powered up the next day and was put away. Powered up the second day okay. Left it over the weekend and went to power it on.
No go. Something is adrift. Also the BIOS settings were wiped which proves it.
I’ve ordered a new VARTA 1220 battery and will test that.