system76/firmware-open

bonw15 firmware very slow and sometimes freezes

Raikiri opened this issue · 6 comments

Raikiri commented
  • Model: bonw15
  • BIOS version: 2023-07-10_0e4a64a
  • EC version:
  • OS: N/A
  • Kernel: N/A

When I enter the firmware interface (by pressing esc during booting), the up/down buttons have a very long delay, about 1 to 2 seconds. However, sometimes the firmware straight up freezes either immediately or after pushing the said up/down buttons a couple times. Sometimes it unfreezes in 5-10 seconds, but most of the time when it happens it freezes for good, fans idle.

When it freezes I have to reboot into the firmware interface a bunch more times and usually it works eventually.

Steps to reproduce

Press esc during boot

Expected behavior

I don't expect the firmware to freeze

Actual behavior

The firmware freezes

leviport commented

I've seen slowness in the firmware menus on all models with 4k displays, but freezing sounds like a different issue entirely. I'll have to look into this.

Raikiri commented

I also had a freeze yesterday in windows 10 while not doing anything. No prior hiccups, no other symptoms, just a freeze while browsing the settings menu (did not freeze again when I rebooted and browsed the same page again).

My old laptop (non-s76) had a similar issue that it froze specifically when almost nothing was happening, turns out that was due to one of the lower-power C-states causing some sort of failure. After months of investigation, the workaround for that laptop was to disable some of the C-states. Maybe it's related, maybe it's not.

Either way, let me know if you can repro the firmware freeze issue or if it's just my machine. It happens about 50% of the time I go into my firmware menu, seems to be completely random. I wonder if the windows freeze corresponds to the same type of freezing or if that's something else entirely.

Raikiri commented

@leviport have you tried it? could you repro it?

leviport commented

Haven't had a chance to yet. My days are very full lately, sorry. I will let you know once I get a chance.

Raikiri commented

Further testing revealed that I could no longer repro this issue. My suspicion is that it froze when I had one specific USB stick inserted. That USB stick (SanDisk Ultra Flair USB 3.0 Flash Drive 32GB) was brand new, but has eventually proven to be faulty (weird read errors, later stopped being detected in the OS), but can it lead to a freeze?

I don't remember whether the USB stick was in the laptop when it froze in windows, but I suspect that it might have been.

Testing: I went into the firmware menu, kept navigating it for a couple minutes and rebooted ~5 times, no freezes. I also did have a usb stick inserted as well, but a different one (not the faulty one).

leviport commented

I only did a little testing, but I saw no freezes either. Only the slow refreshes, which is characteristic of 4k displays anyway

I'll close for now, but we can reopen if there is a need to do so