PC50DD2 (PCS) unable to shutdown

Hi guys I just found this forum and I hope it's the right place to post my question: please admins move my post somewhere else if it doesn't belong here .

I own a CLEVO PC50DD2 sold by pcspecialist as DEFIANCE VII (6 months old: i710850 rtx2060 6gb).

Everything is good about it in my opinion (or acceptable at least, being the crappy speakers its only downside).

However, yesterday I had a strange behaviour which never occurred to me in years with other laptops (it's my first clevo, but I am not yet assuming that clevo is bad out of this).

After a win 10 blue screen (driver power state failure) while I was working - doing nothing different than usual so I can't retrigger it by doing something specific - instead of rebooting (as I expected) the laptop was stuck with fans blowing at top speed, keyboard lit and monitor off.
It was doing apparently nothing: it was not using the hdds (at least that led was not blinking) and it was not heating as if it was working (but it usually is cold for office use, so I can't really say if the cpu was doing something).

I tried forcing it to shutdown but there was nothing to do: I tried every windows combination of keys on the keyboard, plugging and unplugging the power cord, keeeping the power button pressed up to 3 minutes, opening and closing the lid, tapping the power button and so on... and I did this more times in different orders and combinations, but there was no way to shut it down.

I had to wait, unplugging it, for the fans to drain the battery (like 4 hours).

I was lucky that nothing else happened: my data are still there, and the laptop seems to have no other issue so far (I am using it now).

In the windows event viewer, at the time of the issue I have a list of ACPI errors, which seems to be related to some kind of needed BIOS/EC update which is not yet available on PCS website.

I am on PCS BIOS 1.07.02 and today I asked PCS if they can provide me a newer bios release: from what I understood searching on the internet there are some later CLEVO vanilla bios releases for my laptop, but there is some lack of documentation, and I am not sure that I found reliable info.
Is this an official/trusted repository? https://my.hidrive.com/share/yze8mg-wf8#$/BIOS and EC Firmware/CLEVO/P_Series/PCxxDxx

I am willing to wait for PCS support to come back to me, and I don't want to void my warranty, but in the meanwhile I am interested in my options, because I don't feel safe working on a laptop which can't be forced to shutdown if the OS is hanging.

My issue is not the blue screen: it might happen for several reasons and it was the first time in 6 months. My issue is the power button unable to force the shutdown.

Did anybody has ever had the same issue?
In your opinion, is it a BIOS / EC issue as it seems to me to be, or might it be something else? I am ruling out the OS from this issue, because I think that forcing shutdown is a super low level command which should run even on a hanging/deaf/stupid/bugged OS, but I am no rocket scientist or electronic engineer, so I am asking.


Thank you

 

Very weird. I haven't had the same issue. Once I got the dreaded black screen but removing and re-inserting the SSD again solved this.

How are your power management options in Windows and BIOS? I'd advise disabling hibernation etc.

 

Yup, hybernation in disabled already. But I wonder how could this affect the behaviour of the power button. It should work despite the presence of a listening/available OS: I mean it should be on top of everything, just after the "power line" am I wrong?

Thank you

 

Well. You can change the behavior of the power button in Windows in the 'power options' mrnu.

 

Sounds like a hard lock... remove the battery / brick next time. If the battery isn't external then pop the bottom off and disconnect it from the MOBO. If it happens again though and you're under warranty it's a good idea to swap it out. There's no reason holding down the power button for 15-30 seconds shouldn't kill the power.

 

Yes, I know but this is not the same thing: I am not speaking about telling the OS to shutdown through the power button. If the OS is hanging there is no way it would listen to any command.
Usually on every electronic device if you keep the power button pressed for some time it will force the shutdown (cut the power).
This usually work even on pc50dd2.

I am sure I've had a rare combination of things leading to this behaviour, but it sounds like something that should be fixed inside the EC / BIOS, it has to be independent from the OS.

Yes that is what I tought: the battery is internal, and to remove the bottom I need to remove like 10 screws (that still might be feasible only if I am at my office, with a screwdriver and not in a hurry).
The battery plug is not made to be easily unplugged, and I am not sure it's safe to remove it while the laptop is working without risking to damage other stuff (there are around 6 pins connected, and I fear I would also need to remove the battery screws to have the room to unplug it)

The question is: is it safe to flash a newer bios from clevo (where is the official download page?) if PCS doesn't provide one?
I presume it would void warranty, am I right?

Thank you

 

https://repo.palkeo.com/clevo-mirror/ UN:repo PW:repo

Flashing the BIOS shouldn't be a warranty issue but Clevo doesn't really keep things up to date on their website hence the link above. Removing power from the internal battery is the same as if it were a removeable battery. Just make it a swift removal of the cable and things should be fine.

It's just inconvenient to have to remove the case to get to it. The reason I would do it is because the fans running full tilt might cause them to fail if done for extended periods of time causing a true heat issue to meltdown components at a later time if it happens again.

 

Thank you, I couldn't find my laptop series at "your" repo: does this mean that this one https://my.hidrive.com/share/yze8mg-wf8#$/BIOS and EC Firmware/CLEVO/P_Series/PCxxDxx is fake?

Thanks again

 

Doesn't mean it's fake. The repo is just the only place I could find updated BIOS for my particular model since Clevo had not posted any updates since the initial release.

 

I don't have the same laptop as you (I have a Clevo P960ED with the same GPU and is a thin model, Sager branded), but I was dealing with shutdown issues for a while until recently. My issue is relatively simpler, it just wouldn't turn off if I shut it down/restart/sleep. Monitor is off but LED power light and fans stay on, but I can hold the power button to shut it off. I used to get BSODs while gaming but not for a while, and when I did it would eventually shut down by itself and I never faced a situation where it didn't turn off unless the battery got drained.

Anyway I solved my shutdown issue by uninstalling Intel RST and Clevo Control Center, so far my laptop turns off properly in the last few days. I did check event viewer but didn't see any ACPI errors.

As for updating the BIOS, I decided to update from a Sager to Clevo BIOS long ago, and the BIOS thread in this forum says updating from a Clevo to Sager BIOS is not recommended so I never update it since. So I would wait for a BIOS from the reseller for the most recent version, otherwise I'd flash the Clevo BIOS. I think you should open your laptop and unplug and replug the CMOS battery to reset it before flashing a new BIOS.

 

I had the same issue today, while playing Assetto Corsa. Suddendly the game freezed and the keyboard has stopped working, i couldn't shutdown the notebook even by pressing the power button for long time. Now it is still stucked, and i would prefer to wait the full discharge of battery rather than pull it off with the pc still working.I believe
this problem is due to Control center by Obsidian Pc software or from Fan Control which i think i don't fully understand still.

 

What are your settings? Have you deinstalled the clevo control center?

 

CC in its many iterations isn't likely the issue though it does present oddities it's software that triggers windows actions to integrate with the hardware. While it may seem to be your issue it likely isn't the root cause of not being able to power down the system. I run CC for cosmetic changes to the keyboard lighting and the power configurations but, it's simply an overlay that configures windows processes and has no real control over the hardware.

Even when things freak out the hardware buttons are autonomous from the OS even as stubborn as windows tries to be. I will say though while troubleshooting some other issues in the past Linux works a lot better with the system than windows. I was having a power issue that seemed to be windows based where it would spontaneously reboot w/o warning and show up in the event manager as a kernel power issue. I switched to linux for a few days and the issue abated completely. When I reinstalled windows with a newer version it came back. I dug around and someone somewhere mentioned it could be a PSU issue which in fact I did upgrade the brick several months prior but didn't think of that being the issue. I switched back tot he original brick and the issue went away.

So, a cheap try could be swapping the brick out for a different one. Though it's not directly applicable to this scenario it's a potential issue. Anecdotally while using the upgraded brick I also had some issues when the screen would go into power save mode with a flash based tab open it wouldn't respond to waking up w/o some trickery involved to switch tabs to get it to wake up w/o rebooting completely. Now that Flash is dead it's

 

I have uninstalled both CCC and Obsidian tools, now I only have Throttlestop, hoping I have setted it up well:


-110mv (turbo boost stock) in performance and -50mv in interactive (turbo boost max 3.3ghz all core) and -20mv in battery (turbo boost max 2.4 all core), i've also disabled Turbo in Interactive and battery mode.

 

Did you have XTU (through Obsidian Control Center) and Throttlestop running at the same time?

If the problem persists, time to test your warranty.

 

No XTU installed, i've setted Throttlestop just this afternoon, after restarting the pc..

 

I had this exact issue twice recently and stumbled upon this thread.

I bought my PC50DN2 second hand and have no idea who the reseller is as it was completely unbranded. I thought it may be PC Specialist as I'm in the UK but I couldn't find a 2080 super option on their site. They also don't share their bios etc, presumably require a login.

From memory I think it originally had an InsydeH2O bios which I swapped for the Schenker Key 15 bios and EC as the original bios blocked undervolting.

After analysing Windows crash logs the Bluetooth driver looked like the most likely cause which I've now disabled as I never use Bluetooth anyway, no crashes since.

I'm also using Obsidian's control center and fan control, I recall before the crash an error in Obsidian that a critical service was not responding. It let me select "yes" to try and restart the service but got stuck in a loop sending and getting blocked by Bitdefender.

Is anyone else using Bitdefender? I've added control center and fan control as exceptions now to see if it helps if it happens again.

 

Could you not contact the seller and double check?

 

Bought it from a store rather than directly from a seller so doubt they'd know.

I thought I might be able to tell once I opened it up but I've replaced the keyboard and opened the back and no clues.

 

Iirc pc specialist put a sticker on the bottom for their machines.