Medion P6705 potential BIOS issue?

[ezenia]

Hello,

Ever since I updated to Windows 11 22H2, I've been experiencing a strange issue with my laptop. It started with the laptop freezing as the OS tried to load. I'd see the Medion logo, the circular OS loading icon appeared and then it'd get stuck.

After some troubleshooting with the above issue (e.g. removing all my drives, testing RAM in all possible configurations, trying to boot off of both a W10 and W11 USB stick), I took out the CMOS battery, left out for a bit and that reset the CMOS. Laptop came back to life.

However, the issue hasn't been fixed. It seems that after I restart my laptop (click Start > Restart or accept a restart request from something that requires a reboot), it fails to reboot. I see the usual "Restarting..." and then after the screen goes black. It stays black for a bit and then shuts off.

After shut off, it powers back on and then gets stuck. The keyboard backlight is fading in and out (like a slow blink). The blinking does stop afterwards. The screen remains black. After some time, the laptop shuts off and powers back on repeating the exact same behaviour. It does this indefinitely.

I tried force powering off the laptop and it shuts off as I expect. After I press the power button, it does the same thing again. No Medion logo, just a black screen with the blinking keyboard backlight. So I took the CMOS battery out again to reset the CMOS. This worked. Laptop comes back, boots into Windows and is fine.

I've been able to repeat the above issue 3 times now. It's always fixed by resetting the CMOS.

Once the laptop is in Windows, it stays on and runs fine. I can let it sleep and the laptop will wake up and work with no problems. I can also seemingly turn off the laptop (by holding power button for example) and it'll turn right back on.

I just can't restart the machine any more. If I do, it triggers the black screen keyboard blinking issue.

Based on what I am seeing, it looks like a BIOS issue. Is it possible that the Windows 11 update somehow caused some sort of BIOS corruption that's only affecting restarts?

It's a strange problem and somewhat concerning. I don't know if it's coincidence, but this only started happening after I made the switch to Windows 11 22H2. I had upgraded to Windows 11 a while ago and experienced no problems.

Appreciate any input/thoughts on this.

[ezenia]

Re: Medion P6705 potential BIOS issue?

Also I haven't tried reinstalling Windows yet (by doing a proper wipe via USB stick) as I want to try and avoid that if possible. However, I may end up trying it out if it's just case of the OS being corrupted and somehow temporarily breaking the BIOS.

If a proper reinstall will fix that, I'll definitely just do that.

[ezenia]

Re: Medion P6705 potential BIOS issue?

So I reinstalled Windows 11 22H2 via USB and I thought it was solved since I could reboot without issue. I used my laptop for several hours and decided to do a reboot. It happened again. Same exact issue. I had to reset the CMOS to bring the laptop back to life.

I am not sure what's going on. Maybe some hardware is failing. I'm guessing maybe the CPU/GPU. I do notice that the GPU fan stops spinning while the CPU fan continues to spin.

After the CMOS reset, I tried a reboot to see what happened and the laptop rebooted without issue. Looks like the restarts aren't the problem. Something else must be going on.

[ezenia]

Re: Medion P6705 potential BIOS issue?

Well after reinstalling Windows 11 22H2 and also trying a clean install of Windows 10, the issue remained.

After lots of fiddling about, I've now been able to trigger the problem quickly after a CMOS reset. If I put the laptop to sleep and try to restart the OS (where uptime on Task Manager goes back to 0), the issue starts. Laptop gets stuck and stays on a black screen and eventually reboots repeating the same thing over and over until power is cut.

To pass POST, the CMOS must be reset.

I can sleep and shutdown the laptop, but only if fast startup is enabled. With fast startup enabled, clicking on shutdown doesn't trigger a full reboot (up time doesn't reset). If I turn off fast startup and try to shutdown after the laptop has been to sleep, it'll also trigger the problem.

So what seems to be the issue is once the laptop has been to sleep and has woken up, it breaks if it has to properly reboot the OS.

If anyone has even a remote idea of what this might be, I'm all ears. I tried testing RAM in various configurations (each stick tested separately in each slot). I was still able to trigger the fault.

Something's telling me that Windows 11 22H2 might've have corrupted in the BIOS in some way and now that's why it's playing up. This problem only started after updating to 22H2. It was fine before that update.

[ezenia]

Re: Medion P6705 potential BIOS issue?

Looks like the issue was caused by the PCIe SSD. I got a spare M.2 SSD, put that in, installed Windows and then tried various sleep+restart cycles to force the fault to occur. I have not been able to reproduce the fault with this M.2 SSD.

To be more sure, I took out the M.2 SSD and re-inserted the PCIe SSD. Fault came back.

The SSD was the last thing I expected to be the culprit since removing it from the laptop did not allow POST to pass. I always had to reset CMOS to get it to POST.

Whatever is wrong with the SSD seems to be triggered once the laptop wakes from sleep and is told to restart the OS. POST just fails and doesn't come back until the CMOS is reset.

I'm still going to give it a few days to see if it's truly fixed. It certainly looks that way. Hopefully the laptop isn't playing tricks on me, giving me false hope, only to fail again in a few days. Time will tell.