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I have an Asus N56VZ laptop which recently started to cut off the power after precisely 30 minutes after it is turned on.

By cutting off power I mean it does not properly shutdown, but rather one frame it's working normal, and the next there's no power, after which it may be turned on by pressing the button, and it works as if nothing happened, until the next 30 minutes pass.

As far as I am aware, the only change to it since it was bought was doing a clean installation of Windows 10 instead of the Windows 7 installation it came with (including removing the OEM partitions).

The issue is not relevant to software as far as I can tell - it happens in said Windows 10, it happens if I boot to Linux from a DOK, and most importantly - it happens also if left in the BIOS.

I updated the BIOS to the latest version available from 2013, played with BIOS settings, changed to a different BIOS battery (which incidentally also reset the BIOS to its initial state).

I detached everything that I could and ran it with no battery, HDD, modem, and CDROM.

So far the only reason that I found online for this kind of behavior is Intel's Management Engine, however I can't find any way to even check anything related to that on the software side, and to my understanding it should only cause issues if hardware was changed, while as stated, only software changed.

Are there other causes that I am not aware of? Like some weird motherboard-is-going-to-die thing? Would love to know if this laptop is fixable.

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    If it is precisely 30 minutes would check the firmware for watchdog settings. Common on servers, but on a laptop I would not expect them. But if really presicely the same time....
    – Hennes
    Commented Mar 27, 2020 at 16:54
  • Thanks for the answer, but how does one check such things? my experience with firmwares is downloading them with the other drivers and clicking install :P
    – user2503048
    Commented Mar 28, 2020 at 0:09
  • Look in the BIOS.
    – davidgo
    Commented Mar 28, 2020 at 2:34
  • Sometimes a computer will just hang. Merely anoying if it is your desktop. Very anoying if it is a server in a remote location. Watchdogs are a way around this, think of it as a device with a timer and it will reset the server once that time runs out. If eneabled one most install software that resets that timer periodically before it runs out and resets. If the server is hung this will not happen and a reset occurs.
    – Hennes
    Commented Mar 29, 2020 at 11:27
  • Having said that, this is not typically something for a laptop. And I find no such drivers on the Asus webpage for your model. So this is unlikely the case for your problem. Still, time it. If it is always is precisely 30 min then it is likely explicitly triggered somewhere. If it varies, or varies with temperature then it is more likely to be hardware.
    – Hennes
    Commented Mar 29, 2020 at 11:28

1 Answer 1

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I have a Lenovo ThinkPad T520 which recently developed the same problem you are having. It is most certainly the Intel Management Engine that is the culprit.

In my case, I can remove the battery (main battery, not the motherboard CMOS battery) and power cable, reconnect the power cable, and after numerous attemts of rebooting and restarting (by for example entering BIOS config and do a save&restart, or by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del when seeing the GRUB boot loader menu), I can manage to get the IME in a state where it is running enough to not have the 30-minute timer shutdown take place. When this happens, the ME logs "ME is in Recovery State" on the display; sometimes it dumps a screenful of hexadecimal data on the screen with an error code. Unfortunately, I bought the machine as refurbished a few years ago, and they loaded it with Windows10Home, so I haven't been able to use any IME updating tools, as the ones from Lenovo seem to work properly only with Windows 8, which the machine originally came with.

The only solution I have been able to find would be to flash the firmware using something called me_cleaner (find it on GitHub), which disables most of the IME. It will require some hardware to flash it though, which is why I haven't done it yet. (Also, I am uncertain of what state my firmware is actually in at this point, so perhaps flashing it this way will do more harm than good.)

From what I have seen while investigating the problem, various forums (Intel, Lenovo, Asus, HP) seem to have people who have tried getting support for such issues in the past, only to have the manufacturers blame each other, Intel pointing at the computer or motherboard manufacturer and vice versa - there seems to be no easy way to fix this, although there really should be. Some people may have been lucky with reflashing using firmware updaters from the computer manufacturer, but as mentioned, it hasn't worked for me. It is so annoying to have a machine that is essentially in full working order, except for that silly timer shutting it down - I don't care if my machine has IME running or not, but the machine should run, as it is obviously still capable of doing so.

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  • Thank you for the information. I don't really want to put the effort into external flashing, even though technically I should have the required tools (e.g. Raspberrry Pi and Arduino). I'll see about attempting the internal flashing, would be cool to not throw a fully functional decent laptop to the garbage because of malicious manufacturer software (as I see it).
    – user2503048
    Commented Jun 30, 2020 at 1:06
  • Unfortunately it looks like Asus BIOS updates are just updates, rather than the full package. The BIOS will therefore be needed to be read from the chip externally, merged with the latest update manually, only then used with me_cleaner, and finally since the BIOS update doesn't take a full BIOS, it needs to be flashed with another flasher (or externally I suppose). Quite a lot of work, don't know if I have the patience for it :(
    – user2503048
    Commented Jun 30, 2020 at 13:57

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