About Ezenia

Ezenia · ‎19.12.2023

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.

Ezenia · ‎20.10.2022

It does sound like a motherboard fault, likely a short circuit has occurred somewhere. It can be something else though, like bad RAM, drives or another thing connected to the motherboard. Have you tried removing the drives you have connected (HDDs, SSDs)? Have you tried resetting the CMOS? If you can find a CR2032 battery, take it out and leave it for about a minute. Put the battery back in and try to power up. Give the laptop some time as it may power cycle and reboot a bit before actually POSTing. When you reset the CMOS, make sure there's no power source connected (battery and charger). Only connect a power source once you've finished. As this seems to be a power-related fault, what you can do is remove some connections such as fans, speakers, audio boards etc. Leave screen connected for now. If you can observe the same problems with either nothing or very little connected to the motherboard, chances are you have a motherboard fault. If that's the case, the easiest thing is to replace the motherboard. Troubleshooting circuit board issues is complex and requires some tools and experience. If you can't find a new motherboard that's reasonably priced, then the best bet is to replace the laptop. As a last resort and if it's easy to do so, disconnect the laptop screen from the motherboard. Insert a stick of RAM (if you have removable RAM), ensure the power button is connected (it'll either be part of the keyboard or you'll see a separate power button circuit board that connects to the main motherboard) and then connect an external screen to the laptop. If you can't get anything from the external screen, then you can rule out a bad screen issue. Before you remove the laptop screen, make sure there's no power source. Ensure battery and charger have been disconnected. Never disconnect/connect a laptop screen with either power sources still present. It can cause further issues.

Ezenia · ‎20.10.2022

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.

Ezenia · ‎18.10.2022

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.

Ezenia · ‎17.10.2022

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.

Ezenia · ‎16.05.2022

The heatsink is sold separately by the seller. It looks like he/she took apart a Medion P6677 and is selling off the parts for money. They're charging £29.95 for the heatsink. I also see they are selling the screws for the P6677 for another £20. Those screws would probably be OK for the laptop I have. They offer 30 day warranty on their products and they have an "eBay premium service" label which seems to suggest they are a good seller. I am probably not going to purchase it. It's not something I absolutely need right now, I just want to eventually restore the laptop if I can. I've been frequently looking on eBay for the motherboard and most of the times the results come up empty. There's a few instances where I'll come across one, like now. Unfortunately, the sellers are still charging well over £100. That's still cheaper than what Medion want to sell it for, but over £100 is still more than I'd like to pay out if possible. I haven't come across a mainboard that comes from the E6435 itself yet, just other laptops that use the exact same board with some differences (e.g. a dedicated GPU). The goal of this thread really is to determine if using the exact same motherboard that comes from a different model laptop (e.g. a Medion P6677) would work for the Medion E6435 that also uses the same motherboard (size and the way components are laid out are identical). That way If I come across something cheaper in the future, I can go ahead and make the purchase. It does look strongly likely that as long as the motherboard is an "E15S Main Board Rev 2.2" and the CPU is an i5 7200U, it should be an acceptable replacement for the E6435.

Ezenia · ‎15.05.2022

Considering the board on eBay comes from a supposedly functioning laptop (Medion Akoya P6677) and both the CPU and GPU are soldered to the motherboard, I'd say it definitely comes with both. You can see both the CPU and GPU soldered to the motherboard in the pictures on eBay. All I am concerned about really is whether or not this board will work with my laptop screen. I know it'll fit inside the chassis as the board is exactly the same size and all the components are laid out in exactly the same spots (e.g. all connectors for fan, screen and even all the USB/Ethernet ports). What I don't know is if it'll actually work or if it'll cause damage to the motherboard. I am not sure how different the screen on the P6677 and E6435 are. I will need another cooler as well as my one does not have the GPU mounting plate. Not only that, I won't have the screws for the GPU mounting plate. I only have the screws for the CPU one as the heatsink is still mounted to the motherboard. I am not sure what to do about that. I don't think you can buy spare screws for Medion laptops anywhere. The board is pricy, yes. However, I took a look on the Medion spare parts store and they seem to be selling the E6435 mainboard for a whopping 309 euros. That's way more expensive.

Ezenia · ‎15.05.2022

30022856 is the laptop MSN number written on the bottom case of my laptop. Here's what the motherboard looks like on my laptop: This is the eBay listing: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/144547821588 The processor on my laptop is the Intel core i5 7200U On the other side of the board, it says "E15S MAIN BOARD REV 2.2" and that it's a PCB made in China. This is what the one on the eBay listing also says. The layout of the board seems exactly the same. The only difference I can see is that the eBay includes a dedicated GPU whereas my one doesn't.

Ezenia · ‎14.05.2022

I have a Medion Akokya E6435 laptop that died a while ago. The mainboard has some fault that I cannot diagnose and fix. Ever since then I've been looking for a replacement mainboard to no avail. I would like to restore functionality to the laptop one day. It just needs a working mainboard. I have recently came across a mainboard on eBay that is exactly the same with just one difference. It has a GPU whereas the board I have did not. Both boards have the same model numbers. The faulty one is an E15S Rev 2.2 and the one I found on eBay is also an E15S Rev 2.2. I've looked at the board I have and the eBay one and cannot see a visual difference. They're identical, just one has no GPU (the pads are there, it's just empty) and one has a GPU with the power components surrounding it. My question is: if I were to buy the mainboard on eBay and put it into the laptop, would it work fine? The only thing I should need is a new cooler due to the presence of the GPU. I'm not sure though, so thought I'd maybe ask here. Maybe someone will know.

Ezenia · ‎26.12.2020

So after not powering up a Medion Akoya E6435 for several months, I found it no longer powers up at all when I tried to turn it on today. I did some basic fixes and failed to make any progress. As I removed the keyboard and felt around the parts of the motherboard that were visible, I could sense some heat coming from somewhere, it was very faint. This prompted me to take a closer look as experience has told me a heating board is a bad sign. I disassembled the laptop completely and removed the motherboard. I then hooked up the charger and turned the motherboard on the opposite side where I felt the heat coming from. I touched the top of a chip and ouch, the heat was immense. It gets rapidly hot the moment the charger goes into the charging port. Once I take it out, the heat subsides. I don't have to press the power button at all. It isn't even connected at this point. Pretty much nothing but the CPU and heatsink is attached to the motherboard. So now I at least know the motherboard has some sort of fault. I cannot identify what the chip does and Google isn't helping. This is rather annoying as I'd like to try and fix it. Would the Medion support team be able to help out with this, or is this something they likely wouldn't address? I tried to see if there were any replacement motherboards on sale, but unfortunately I couldn't find any for the E6435 model. Does anyone here happen to know if any other motherboards would be compatible with the laptop chassis? I know it's a long shot, but I thought I'd ask.