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.
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