4GB/64GB board powers itself off. Driver issue? [defective]
sodata 2017-03-16 10:02:42 3714 Views4 Replies Hi Everyone - hopefully someone can help me out with getting my first board up and running, and maybe I can save some of you some time by sharing my experiences.
Can I say first of all that I am an IT Engineer by profession and I have many years of experience in the deployment and commissioning of commercial Windows-based systems.
I recently purchased a 4GB/64GB board, which from the first time it was powered on, keeps turning itself off before it can actually be used for anything useful. The board does not shut down gracefully - eg you don't see "Windows is shutting down" onscreen - it just powers off like you disconnected the power. I can see exactly when the board powers off because the red power LED on the underside goes out at that time.
I have read through many articles on this forum, and it seemed the first troubleshooting stage was to ensure I was using a power supply with sufficient capacity. I have tested using two different power supplies;
1) AUKEY PA-U33 (https://www.amazon.com/AUKEY-5-Port-Cha ... B00UN1LM7Q), which has a total output capacity of 10A @ 5VDC. This was used to power the board via the USB Micro B port using several USB cables, all known to be in good working order when used with other hardware - mobile/cell phones and other IoT and embedded devices etc. Because I an not 100% sure exactly what the maximum current is available per port, I also tried;
2) MEAN WELL RT-65B (https://www.meanwell-web.com/en/product ... uct/RT-65B), which has an output capacity of 5A @ 5VDC. This was used to power the board via the CN2 pins.The 5V output of this power supply is adjustable, and I have tested the board at 5.0V, 5.25V and 5.5V. As an extra step, I added a supercapacitor ("bypass capacitor") across the output of this power supply to cater for any peak requirements the board may have. The capacitor is rated at 4.0Farads at 5.5V (please note not uF, nF, pF etc, but F). During operation the voltage measured across the CN2 pins was between 4.6V and 5.3V.
I am confident I am supplying enough power to the board using the above hardware, but let me know if I am missing something!
The next stage was to test the Windows installation. I managed to get as far as booting to Windows and resetting the system, but the board turned itself off half way through the process, which left me with a bricked board.
I downloaded the 64-bit LattePanda image (relevant to the 4GB/64GB board) and following the guide, created a bootable USB stick and imaged the board. The imaging process seems to work absolutely fine, but when the board is restarted (by typing "exit" as instructed by the script) and Windows is 'Setting up devices' at the next boot, the board turns itself off at 35%. I repeated this approximately 10 times with the exact same results.
I purchased a fan with my board, and to test whether it was overheating hardware that was causing the problem, I repeated the imaging process with the fan installed and connected to the CN2 pins. This time I got to 42% before the board turned itself off.
I also attempted imaging with various BIOS settings, including disabling any thermal detection to see how far I could get. No BIOS settings changes made any difference, including factory defaults.
This makes me suspect a driver issue.
Next I wanted to test the LattePanda image, so I installed Windows 10 Pro from an official USB stick purchased directly from Microsoft. Windows installed successfully first time, and the board stays powered on (I left it on for several hours).
Now I wanted to get the drivers installed and updated so that everything listed in Device Manager was looking correct and error-free. I downloaded these from the LattePanda GitHub repository. Following the readme, I installed the drivers - most of which were successful (eg I don't have a touch screen so that one didn't install).
After a restart, the board turns itself off before it gets to the desktop. I suspect a driver issue - possibly the graphics driver. I don't suspect faulty hardware at this point, although it is possible that I just have a defective board. I will continue testing by installing one driver at a time - if there is a single problematic driver, hopefully I can isolate it. This is quite time consuming when you have to re-image the system every time however. I'll take some pictures and screenshots as I continue testing, and maybe upload a guide for building a low cost PSU...
Any thoughts welcome!
Can I say first of all that I am an IT Engineer by profession and I have many years of experience in the deployment and commissioning of commercial Windows-based systems.
I recently purchased a 4GB/64GB board, which from the first time it was powered on, keeps turning itself off before it can actually be used for anything useful. The board does not shut down gracefully - eg you don't see "Windows is shutting down" onscreen - it just powers off like you disconnected the power. I can see exactly when the board powers off because the red power LED on the underside goes out at that time.
I have read through many articles on this forum, and it seemed the first troubleshooting stage was to ensure I was using a power supply with sufficient capacity. I have tested using two different power supplies;
1) AUKEY PA-U33 (https://www.amazon.com/AUKEY-5-Port-Cha ... B00UN1LM7Q), which has a total output capacity of 10A @ 5VDC. This was used to power the board via the USB Micro B port using several USB cables, all known to be in good working order when used with other hardware - mobile/cell phones and other IoT and embedded devices etc. Because I an not 100% sure exactly what the maximum current is available per port, I also tried;
2) MEAN WELL RT-65B (https://www.meanwell-web.com/en/product ... uct/RT-65B), which has an output capacity of 5A @ 5VDC. This was used to power the board via the CN2 pins.The 5V output of this power supply is adjustable, and I have tested the board at 5.0V, 5.25V and 5.5V. As an extra step, I added a supercapacitor ("bypass capacitor") across the output of this power supply to cater for any peak requirements the board may have. The capacitor is rated at 4.0Farads at 5.5V (please note not uF, nF, pF etc, but F). During operation the voltage measured across the CN2 pins was between 4.6V and 5.3V.
I am confident I am supplying enough power to the board using the above hardware, but let me know if I am missing something!
The next stage was to test the Windows installation. I managed to get as far as booting to Windows and resetting the system, but the board turned itself off half way through the process, which left me with a bricked board.
I downloaded the 64-bit LattePanda image (relevant to the 4GB/64GB board) and following the guide, created a bootable USB stick and imaged the board. The imaging process seems to work absolutely fine, but when the board is restarted (by typing "exit" as instructed by the script) and Windows is 'Setting up devices' at the next boot, the board turns itself off at 35%. I repeated this approximately 10 times with the exact same results.
I purchased a fan with my board, and to test whether it was overheating hardware that was causing the problem, I repeated the imaging process with the fan installed and connected to the CN2 pins. This time I got to 42% before the board turned itself off.
I also attempted imaging with various BIOS settings, including disabling any thermal detection to see how far I could get. No BIOS settings changes made any difference, including factory defaults.
This makes me suspect a driver issue.
Next I wanted to test the LattePanda image, so I installed Windows 10 Pro from an official USB stick purchased directly from Microsoft. Windows installed successfully first time, and the board stays powered on (I left it on for several hours).
Now I wanted to get the drivers installed and updated so that everything listed in Device Manager was looking correct and error-free. I downloaded these from the LattePanda GitHub repository. Following the readme, I installed the drivers - most of which were successful (eg I don't have a touch screen so that one didn't install).
After a restart, the board turns itself off before it gets to the desktop. I suspect a driver issue - possibly the graphics driver. I don't suspect faulty hardware at this point, although it is possible that I just have a defective board. I will continue testing by installing one driver at a time - if there is a single problematic driver, hopefully I can isolate it. This is quite time consuming when you have to re-image the system every time however. I'll take some pictures and screenshots as I continue testing, and maybe upload a guide for building a low cost PSU...
Any thoughts welcome!