Medion Erazer P6705 MD61366 not POST'ing after shutdown/restart

[Ezenia]

Hello,

After updating to Windows 11 22H2, my laptop seems to have developed an odd problem. It started with the laptop freezing whenever a restart was triggered. It would freeze on the Medion logo where the OS tries to load up. The circular loading icon appeared (to indicate OS is loading) and then froze. Force shutting down the laptop would get things working again. It would occasionally hang after restart on a black screen. The laptop would fail to complete the restart and needed to be forced shut off. 

I continued to use the laptop after noticing this, not thinking too much of it. A few days ago I got another update request. I did the update and that's when things seemingly got worse. Upon a reboot, the laptop screen would remain black. I left it to see what it did and it shut off. Once it shut off, it powered back up again and was stuck on a black screen. Here it simply repeated the same behaviour. It'd remain at the black screen for a bit and then shut off and tried to POST again. If I force shut off the laptop, it stays off which is what I expect.

I tried the following things to try and get the laptop back to life:

• Removing all drives - to eliminate the OS from the equation
• Removing both sticks of RAM and then testing them individually in both slots.
• Removing other components (such as speakers, USB power board etc)
• Removing main battery and trying to power via charger only
• When the laptop was freezing on the Medion logo, I took out all drives and tried to boot via both a Windows 10 and 11 USB. The issue persisted when booting to the USB sticks. It cleared after resetting the CMOS.

None of the above worked. What worked is resetting the CMOS by removing the CMOS battery for about a minute or so. The CMOS reset has been working whenever this issue pops up.

The laptop works OK when it's in Windows. I can play games for hours and use it normally. It doesn't cut power or crash. I can put it to sleep and it'll wake up fine. What I can't do is shut it down or restart some time after the CMOS reset. I can restart and shutdown the laptop perfectly fine the moment after resetting the CMOS. If I try several hours later, the problem comes back and requires a CMOS reset.

Thinking the OS might be corrupted, I got my USB stick with Windows 11 22H2 and did a proper reinstall (all done through the USB). This did not help. The issue is still persisting. It is baffling me.

I've run the built-in memory diagnostic test and Memtest86 (did 2 passes). These tests did not show any RAM errors. 

I am baffled as to what is causing this problem. Is it mere coincidence that the issue started after updating Windows 11, or did Windows 11 do something to the BIOS? I'm thinking it could be a BIOS issue given that a CMOS reset keeps fixing things. Perhaps it's some odd BIOS corruption? I tried another CMOS battery I had laying around and it did not solve the problem. I've also checked both CMOS batteries with a multi-meter, they measure 3V, which indicates they aren't dead. So a bad CMOS battery is unlikely to be the cause.

I'm hoping it's not a more serious fault, such as a dying chipset, CPU or GPU as these aren't replaceable. 

If anyone else has any ideas as to what might be going on here, I'm all ears. I've run some tests to see when the issue pops up. So far I've waited in Windows for 30mins and 38mins and then attempted a restart, the issue hasn't returned. I am close to finishing the hour-long check (up time nearly at 60mins). The last time this issue triggered, the up time was at 1hr27mins. Trying to see if it's random or if it only happens after passing a certain up time threshold.

[EastClintwood]

Hi @Ezenia, and welcome to the community.

Thank you for your detailed description of the problem and for ruling out some possible sources of error, especially with the hardware.

In my opinion, the problem should be solved by resetting the PC to the factory settings, because as you have already described, the problem is probably caused by a faulty Windows update: 

Tips: How to restore the system of Windows devices - MEDION Community

If the problem persists, please let us know.

Regards,
EastClintwood

[Ezenia]

I did the reinstall of Windows 11 22H2 already via a USB stick (basically a clean install). It still did the same thing. Thinking it might've been Windows 11 22H2 that was the problem, I made a Windows 10 USB stick and installed that to the laptop. Unfortunately, the laptop is still behaving the same.

I have made some progress. I've been able to quickly trigger the issue now. Rather than waiting X amount of time, I can trigger the fault almost immediately after the CMOS reset. 

The issue seems to be caused by sleep. If I put the laptop to sleep (or if it auto sleeps), I find that if I reboot the laptop (do a proper restart), it'll get stuck and no longer POST. Nothing you do fixes it, only the CMOS reset. I can shutdown the laptop after putting to sleep only if fast startup is enabled. On Windows 10, shut down doesn't fully restart the system (up time still continues where it left of as seen from Task Manager). If you turn off the fast startup option in Power & Sleep settings, so that clicking on "Shut down" actually does a proper reboot (uptime on Task Manager resets), then clicking shutdown will also trigger the problem.

So what I've gathered so far is it's an issue between sleeping and properly restarting the OS. I'm able to restart the laptop after a CMOS reset if the laptop doesn't go to sleep. I've tested this numerous times. I've left the laptop active for several hours, tried to restart and it's booted up fine. Once you throw in sleep into the equation and then try to restart, POST fails.

I did run a load of tests with the RAM in various configurations (both sticks tested separately in both RAM slots). The issue unfortunately remained. This means it's unlikely to be bad RAM unless both my sticks have gone bad. I'm not suspecting that is the case since the RAM has been passing RAM tests with 0 errors.

This problem is certainly baffling me. Something is telling me that WIndows 11 22H2 may have caused some sort of BIOS corruption that's affecting sleep+restart. This freezing behaviour started right after updating to 22H2. It was fine before then.

The fact that OS reinstalls (even different Windows versions) and removing components (e.g. RAM) aren't solving the problem makes me suspect that something might be up with the BIOS. I do know that the BIOS can cause problems if something goes wrong with it.

This laptop has no way to reliably flash the BIOS, so I can't just do a BIOS re-flash to see if that clears the problem. 

At this time, I do not think the issue is hardware. I suspect software (in this case the BIOS). Not sure how to proceed at this point.

[EastClintwood]

Hello @Ezenia, and thank you for your feedback.

Just to be sure Windows 10 was not installed while Windows 11 was also installed?

You can only run the configuration program upon system startup. If the notebook has already started up, switch it off and restart it. Press the F2 key to run the UEFI configuration. There you should reset the settings to a state before the error occurred.

The last option would be to remove the Bios battery to reset it.

If the problem cannot be solved this way, the PC should be sent to the service please contact us here

Greetings,
EastClintwood

[Ezenia · Accepted solution]

Wow. Looks like the cause was the PCIe SSD all along. I found a spare M.2 SSD (previously used in another dead Medion laptop and then transferred to an old desktop that isn't used much), installed Windows 10 to that and I haven't been able to replicate the fault since. I've put it through a load of sleep+restart cycles, it boots as I expect now. I'm usually able to trigger the fault shortly after the CMOS reset.

Something must've failed with the SSD to cause issues with rebooting once the laptop was put to sleep and that's also likely why Windows 11 22H2 gave issues. It was mere coincidence that the SSD began to die after that was installed. The SSD was the last thing I expected since it seemed fine. It had no SMART errors or anything like that.

Looking back, I did notice that when I installed Windows 11 22H2, the SSD was no longer appearing in the BIOS. Despite having an update just installed, there was no boot option. It appeared in Windows setup and let me install Windows again to it. I didn't think too much of it at the time because Windows still saw it when the BIOS couldn't. I thought it was just a corrupted OS update. 

To make sure it's the SSD and not the laptop playing tricks, I reinserted the suspected bad SSD. As soon as I inserted it, it was not detected in the BIOS again and no UEFI boot option showed up. Booting to Windows 10 setup showed the SSD was there and clearly had an OS still installed to it (could tell by the amount of space being used). I reinstalled Windows 10 once again to the drive. Once installed, I put the laptop through the usual sleep+restart tests. It failed. 

Reset CMOS, put the spare SSD in with Windows 10 freshly installed and I've been unable to replicate the issue yet. It's still too early to tell. The laptop could be messing with me. For now, it seems to be fixed. 

I never expected a failing SSD to cause such a weird POST fail. The laptop wouldn't even boot without it installed. That's what made me initially not suspect it. I had to reset the CMOS every time to bring the laptop back to life. Whatever the failing SSD did, the laptop did not like it and refused to POST until the CMOS was reset. 

Going to give it a few days to see if the issue returns. If it doesn't, I'll jump back to Windows 11 22H2 and see what happens. Hopefully it stays working. I like simpler faults.

[FetaMuncher]

I have the same exact problem. But also:

I rarely use the laptop screen for an external one. My laptop screen has a red tint indicating a loose cable. But I use external so I don't bother fixing it. But I'm on holiday now, and this issue with the power has started. When I use external screens and keep the lid down, it doesn't glitch. So maybe your problem is physical?

[Ezenia]

My issue was caused by the PCIe SSD that came with the laptop. I replaced it and no longer have any issues with my laptop. It's been running fine ever since. It's able to sleep and wake. I haven't needed to reset the CMOS since changing the SSD.