Fixing Asus UX21e unexpected power off
May. 19th, 2012 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mjg59Edit: Sigh, some further testing shows that it seems better, but not fixed. If you unplug the power while the CPU is over 80 degrees C, the machine will power off. I can't find any way of avoiding this - it seems to be handled at the embedded controller or SMM level, since as far as I can tell Linux isn't surviving long enough to even be aware that the event occurred.
Original entry:
The Asus UX21e (and maybe the UX31e?) has the irritating misfeature that it reloads the CPU thermal tables when you unplug the power. One consequence of this is that it'll automatically throttle itself much more aggressively on battery (reducing performance) but the more serious one is that the new critical power off temperature may then be lower than the temperature the CPU is currently operating at, resulting in the machine turning itself off. As far as I can tell from debugging, this is completely OS-independent - it still happens even if I stub out all the ACPI code for power supply events and there are reports of the same thing occurring on Windows. The good news is that it seems to be fixed in newer firmware versions. The even better news is that you can flash it without Windows. Just download the BIOS image from the Asus website, copy it onto a FAT formatted USB stick, insert that, go into the firmware (hit F2 on the splash screen) and start the flash program from there.
Original entry:
The Asus UX21e (and maybe the UX31e?) has the irritating misfeature that it reloads the CPU thermal tables when you unplug the power. One consequence of this is that it'll automatically throttle itself much more aggressively on battery (reducing performance) but the more serious one is that the new critical power off temperature may then be lower than the temperature the CPU is currently operating at, resulting in the machine turning itself off. As far as I can tell from debugging, this is completely OS-independent - it still happens even if I stub out all the ACPI code for power supply events and there are reports of the same thing occurring on Windows. The good news is that it seems to be fixed in newer firmware versions. The even better news is that you can flash it without Windows. Just download the BIOS image from the Asus website, copy it onto a FAT formatted USB stick, insert that, go into the firmware (hit F2 on the splash screen) and start the flash program from there.
Good news
Date: 2012-05-20 05:51 pm (UTC)Thanks
Date: 2012-05-20 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-20 09:37 pm (UTC)Also, random, but why the hell would the thermal cutoff temp change based upon the power source? *BOGGLE*
no subject
Date: 2012-05-20 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-20 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-20 11:24 pm (UTC)FAT, but never NTFS
Date: 2012-05-22 04:22 am (UTC)Same problems with Lenovo Thinkpad X120e I guess
Date: 2012-05-25 01:17 pm (UTC)I think I'm having the same problems with Lenovo Thinkpad X120e. After some stress and CPU heat the system goes bonkers with thermal shutdown. Needs to cool down an hour perhaps before everything works again. Pretty lame stuff. I took some vids about this:
First, the thermal shutdown occuring in Windows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfhoUFQ1i
Second, live Linux (SystemRescueCD) dying in udev activation phase:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChJCQy5bS
Regards,
Mr. Janne Paalijarvi
same on UX31e
Date: 2013-02-07 03:05 am (UTC)Latest BIOS (214) for UX31E still doesn't fix the issue
Date: 2013-02-18 06:07 pm (UTC)Re: Latest BIOS (214) for UX31E still doesn't fix the issue
Date: 2013-03-07 08:34 pm (UTC)...but it still is acting up. Any help from anyone would be greatly appreciated.