FAQ

Q. How are you able to produce custom Chromebook firmware?

Google uses coreboot to produce Chromebook firmware. coreboot is an open source project and is the most open, widely available firmware in the world. This means that anyone can download the source via Git and try compiling their own firmware (if they’re brave enough, and don’t mind buying some relatively inexpensive hardware to debrick when it doesn’t work). See http://johnlewis.ie/compiling-your-own-coreboot-firmware-for-the-samsung-series-5-550-chromebook/

Q. Is coreboot *completely* open?

Yes, but, in the case of Intel chipsets, there are at least 2 binaries blobs required for the hardware to function correctly – the system agent and management engine binaries. Without the first, the system will not boot at all. Without the second your Chromebook will auto switch-off after 30 mins. The vast majority of coreboot compatible Intel hardware also requires a VGA blob.

Q. How much do these ROM’s cost?

I make these ROM’s freely available to people who either haven’t got the expertise or the time to compile/make their own. Their is no warranty implicit or declared, and it may also invalidate your Chromebook’s warranty. You bought it you broke it, YMMV, etc, etc.

Q. Will these ROM’s work on ARM based Chromebooks?

No. SeaBIOS is x86-centric. Nope, nada, never gonna happen. Suck it up.

Q. I’ve flashed one of your BOOT_STUB’s and I have a blank screen. Help!

You possibly had a hang, and the only way you thought you could reboot was by pressing the ESC – F3 (Refresh) – Power button combination. Unfortunately, this key combination is still active with a modified BOOT_STUB and as with the stock ROM, it tries to activate recovery mode. Obviously recovery mode is no longer available, and it therefore doesn’t do anything (even initialise the screen). Pulling the battery power resets the activated CMOS flag and returns things to normal (except for a wild date and time which will need to be rectified, possibly before you are able to connect to wireless/ethernet).

Q. My USB device will not show up in the SeaBIOS boot menu?

The device is taking longer than 100ms to announce itself on the bus, and is therefore not strictly USB compliant. It’s possible to add a file to the firmware CBFS to increase this timeout, but there will still be some USB devices which don’t show up unless you increase it to something ridiculous like 5 seconds. For instance, I have a USB 3.0 stick which takes 3.5 seconds to announce itself. Obviously, increasing the timeout will increase the time SeaBIOS takes to get to OS, which is not desirable, IMO.

Q. What happens if I accidentally flash the wrong ROM?

Worst case, you’ll have a bricked Chromebook. Slightly less worse case, you won’t be able to see any display, but the Chromebook will be otherwise functional. In the latter case you can fly blind (press ESC a second or so after switching on, then “2”) to boot off a Linux USB stick with an SSH server installed, and reflash over the network.

Q. Help! I’ve bricked my Chromebook. What now?

You need a Raspberry Pi (or BeagleBone Black, or Bus Pirate, in that order of preference), Pomona 5250 SOIC clip (the 3M one doesn’t fit well), and some appropriate jumper wires (female to female for RPi, male to female for BBB/BP).

See https://github.com/bibanon/Coreboot-ThinkPads/wiki/Hardware-Flashing-with-Raspberry-Pi#raspberry-pi-c720-chromebook if using an RPi and ignore the stuff about the “bridged” wiring – you almost certainly don’t need it.

Q. Can I run Windows?

Almost all the ROMs/mods don’t contain the necessary ACPI information to run Windows.

Q. Power-saving doesn’t work, can you fix it?

If you’re using a Sandy/Ivybridge based Chromebook and the BOOT_STUB modification, suspend and VMX will not work. If those things are important, rerun the script and flash a full ROM (after backing up your RO_VPD and GBB regions, of course).

Q. I don’t see a ROM for <insert my Chromebook/box here>. Will you make one?

It depends. Even though compiling coreboot doesn’t require dev knowledge, it is still a non-trivial process, which can take many man-hours in order to produce something that works – I do also have a family to feed you know …

Q. My touchpad doesn’t work! Help!

It’s likely that you aren’t running a new enough kernel. In the case of Baytrail Chromebooks, you need at least kernel 4.0 (and possibly higher). Kernel 4.0.4 in Fedora 22 works OOTB with Baytrail Chromebooks. There is also a well known problem with the touchpads on the Acer C710 which makes them vulnerable to static (especially when on battery). There are work-arounds to properly earth/ground the pad. Other models may also suffer from this.

Q. Can I continue to use ChromeOS with a modified BOOT_STUB/Full ROM?

Yes, see https://johnlewis.ie/dual-boot-chromeos-linux-on-a-chromebook/ but bear in mind it does not work on Baytrail Chromebooks.

Q. I didn’t make a backup of my existing ROM, but I would like to go back to the stock firmware. What can I do?

Use the script referenced on the ROM Download page to flash a shellball ROM.

Q. <Insert my distro here> won’t boot from Live USB, I get a kernel panic/error?

Try adding “mem=1952M” to the kernel command line. Also try a different distro – I had an issue today whereby Fedora 22 wouldn’t boot on my son’s HP Pavilion Chromebook (and would go into a boot loop), although Ubuntu 15.04 worked fine.

Q. I have an ARM Chromebook, can I run Linux natively?

Not really. Upstream kernel/Xorg still does not (and is not likely to) have the requisite graphics support required for accelerated display. You can shoehorn Fedora/Arch/etc on there, but there are packages which aren’t available/don’t-work under ARM.

 Q. My <insert-distro-here> USB key won’t boot, what can I do?

As a reliable baseline, I recommend dd’ing a Fedora/CentOS ISO to your USB key, and booting from that. You can also use an external USB CD/DVDROM drive. See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB#Command_line_.22direct_write.22_method_.28most_operating_systems.2C_non-graphical.2C_destructive.29 Make sure you use the dd parameter “conv=fsync” to ensure the data is written to the drive before dd completes, and you pull the USB stick out. I have also had success with Fedora Live USB Creator. Unetbootin is know to be problematic. YMMV, etc, etc.

Q. My keyboard won’t work at the SeaBIOS menu, what can I do?

The keyboard controller can sometimes get itself in a knot, especially if you’ve hard powered off a number of times. Switch the power off for about 30 seconds and try again. Also make sure you don’t repeatedly press the keyboard *before* the SeaBIOS menu has appeared.

Join the conversation

250 Comments

  1. Hello, John,

    Thank you for your great work on the CoreBoot project for Chromebooks.

    After seeing your work, I grabbed a Acer C710 to upgrade my old Asus eeePC. I have a Celeron 1007 based C710 and successfully flashed: http://johnlewis.ie/coreboot-c710-1007u-170214.rom this evening.

    I installed Ubuntu 14.04 and got my trackpad and funtion keys working post install. Awesome.

    I then proceeded to install VirtualBox with my VMs…and I received the error…”VT-x is disabled in the bios (VERR_VMX_NO_VMX)

    Is VM-x extensions enabled in this version of bios and can it be added?

    Also..I am running a SanDIsk 128G SSD. It produces a momentary error as if it can’t read from the drive upon boot up, but then proceeds to but. It’s a file system error related to it not finding /. (root). I know it sounds counter-productive since it is an SSD, but would a spin-up delay help? Is this an option?

    Thanks again,
    Rich

    1. Hi Rich,

      As a matter of course I *always* set CONFIG_ENABLE_VMX=y in the coreboot config, whichever model I’m compiling for (if it doesn’t set it automatically for me). However, just to be doubly sure, I downloaded the ROM and extracted the config, and it is indeed set.

      I have a feeling that VirtualBox gives red-herring messages like this. The acid test would be to install a VM with KVM instead (Virtual Machine Manager) as that will not work at all without VMX being enabled. You will probably want to uninstall VirtualBox prior to that test, to ensure VirtualBox’s modules don’t interfere. HTH.

      John.

    2. In answer to your question about the SSD. It is possible to introduce a delay, but I’m not sure that it will help. Are you saying that the SSD won’t work at all?

  2. Hello there,
    I have two questions:
    1) I have an Acer C710 with a Celeron 847 CPU, and plan to install Linux Mint. Would I need use the BIOS ROM at http://johnlewis.ie/coreboot-parrot-seabios-good-22102013.rom ?
    2) If I were to replace the current SSD with a larger one that is not running ChromeOS, would I need to flash the BIOS ROM beforehand, or after swapping the drives?

    Thanks in advance,
    Mike

  3. Hi, John
    Thanks for your helps, I have tried
    ###########
    You can download a recovery image, use kpartx to map the image partitions to mountable points, and mount /dev/mapper/loop0p3 (the ChromeOS root partition) *read-only*. You can then copy the contents to a writeable location and chroot in
    ###########
    i have already copied the contents to Home DIR, but i was stucked at chroot in , when i executed “sudo chroot /bin/bash”, it’s said like that exec format error. I am not familiar with chroot, Can you give me some advices ??

  4. Oh, after readed all your blog comments, i found the method to chroot in :-P , Please ignore my above question~~

  5. Hi,

    I am thinking about purchasing a C720 and ideally I want to achieve what you have managed to. Basically I am not good at tech.
    – Can you recommend a nice gui Linux distro to install which is stable with c720 and also supports stable xbmc.
    – It would be great if you could record a how to video showing the steps required to install linux and your coreboot (from start to finish.

    I will be your no1 fan?

  6. no probs. I was asking for alot.
    Unfortunately I am from UK and the chromebox just isn’t available or cheap to import.

  7. hello mistakenly installed a wrong rom on my acer c7, I need to install windows 7. currently my acer goes straight to GRUB when I turn on. how I can do to change the firmware back to windows?

    ESC+F3+power on don’t work

  8. hello John, thanks for your answer, but could you be a little more specific? I’ve done the stick with fedora and I booted, I guess I should open the terminal and write lines of code, but are not supported. can you help me? thanks again

  9. Hi John. Thanks for your help, I’ve done what you told me, but I get the following message: “No operations were specified”

    something I’m doing wrong?

  10. thanks … I did it, now I only need to operate the keyboard and touchpad. Any news about it?

  11. I could really use some help ,

    I have the HP 14 haswell chromebook i flashed the updated rom and everything is ok but i would like to try and go back to stock chrome os. i was stupid and do not have a back up i do have fedora 20 running on it now . is there a easy guide or any step by step to reflash ? i have a chrome os recovery usb stick i made in chrome os and thats all.

    thanks for any help i feel i may be in over my head.

    1. Bill Richardson did a reasonably easy write-up on how to extract a “default” ROM from a ChromeOS image. It’s on Google groups somewhere, will see if I can dig it out.

  13. thank you john im so upset i didnt do a backup and im so afraid i have a brand new brick without your help. thank you so so much for your time in helping me.

    1. I’ve made the post, Mike. I’m worried in case recovery won’t work with the shellball HWID, but I have no way of testing it without b0rking my own machine up.

  14. Hi John, nice work
    I’ve tried to flash your rom for acer c7 with a usb bios flash tool.
    ubuntu and netrunner Linux runing smoothly by live usb except the touchpad.
    can you show me the link, If i want to learn steb by step develop this rom like you.

    i’m very clearly with your F&Q about this rom why can’t install windows 7 natively in this chromebook but it made ​​me curious.
    i’ve tried run my win7 hdd on this device but it still halt on windows 7 logo, exactly the windows driver problem

    1. It’s not really “developing” a ROM as such. Although there have been times when I’ve been in contact with the coreboot/Google devs in order to get a ROM working, I’m really just compiling something that’s already been developed. There’s an example build tutorial for a Samsung 550 on this website if you do a search. You can also extract the .config from an existing ROM using cbfstool (part of the coreboot Git repo), which will give you a safe starting point, and there’s also quite a bit of information on the coreboot website itself, as well as in the mailing list archives. Be prepared to buy a Bus Pirate + cable if you want to experiment building your own, because one config error, or a missing binary can leave you with a brick.

  15. ok. thank’s for your information John
    I’ve been backing up the original rom so if i get brick, i can flash the bios chip with my backup by taking the bios chip and then reflash with my tool

  16. yes correct. i pick up the SPI chip with hot air solder from MB and then take in my flasher tool to backup and copy this rom.

    at the first time i’ve tried flash with AO756 bios but not working and then i try with your rom, succes with some notes like on your F&Q

    1. I have spoken to Duncan Laurie and recovery *should* work, but you’ll need to set a valid HWID after you’ve got ChromeOS back on there using gbb_utility, otherwise ChromeOS won’t update.

  17. John Lewis I have accidentally flash with wrong ROM and i have Blank screen when I power on my Chromebook.
    Please how can i do to recover my bios; I have a Chromebook HP Pavilion 14-c010us?
    Please help me.

  18. i have flashed the BIOS of my chromebook HP Pavilion 14-c010us with the ROM of the HP Chromebook 14 in your web site instead of the ROM of HP Pavilion Chromebook in your web site. after when i power on my chromebook, i have a blank screen. Please how can i do to recover fix the problems?

  19. Hi John,
    Wanted to say ‘Hi and wish you well!’ My Acer C7 is still going strong and I have since upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on it and it’s working flawlessly thanks to your ROM.
    Well, Cheers to you, John!
    Chi :0)

  20. Hi John,
    Firstly, I’d like to thank you a lot for the ROMs that you’ve made. They’ve been really helpful.

    A long time ago, I flashed my Acer C720 with your first C720 ROM and installed Ubuntu. The laptop has been working nicely, and now I’m looking to flash to your updated BIOS so that suspend will work again.

    I’m running Ubuntu 14.04 on my Acer now; are there any special considerations I need to look into before I run your script above, or should it work regardless?

    1. Hi Natalie,

      Not that I know of. Only distro specific issue that’s been come across so far is missing dmidecode in Arch. Don’t worry, if something goes wrong, it’ll crap out way before it get’s far enough to write the ROM. There’ve been 476 downloads of the script so far and no one has told me of any issues apart from the Arch one. Enjoy!

  21. “even though compiling coreboot doesn’t require dev knowledge, it is still a non-trivial process, which can take many man-hours to produce something that works – I do also have a family to feed you know …”

    OK – I’ll bite. What level of donation would be compelling enough to induce the production of a Dell Chromebook 11 ROM? I’m eager to get to work converting it to something other than a Chromebook but I’m not technical enough to make a ROM…

    1. It depends. :P

      I’m quite happy to put together a ROM, but it will take an hour or so to get all the binaries together for the Dell Chromebook 11. To expedite the ROM into existence I will need to know what the PCI id’s of the graphics card are, which can be found out by executing “lspci -vnnn”. Will probably be something like 8086:0a06.

      If I make one, be aware that I don’t have that hardware to test it on, and that there is a chance it could therefore brick yours. However, you should be heartened by the fact that I will use ChromiumOS’s version of coreboot, and more specifically the snapshot used for the Dell Chromebook 11 to produce a ROM, so it “should” work.

    2. Just in case I didn’t make myself clear enough – you don’t need to give me any money for me to have a go at producing the ROM, but I do need those ID’s from you to get started.

    3. I’ve made a build for you to test for the Dell Chromebook 11 (Wolf). If you use the script it’ll do it (whilst warning you you are a guinea pig). Please report success or failure. Chances are pretty good that it will work.

  22. Hello John,

    I was looking for a cheap replaceable linux travel laptop. I came across the Acer 720P on amazon.

    Now, is the firmware that you provide for the Acer C720 also useable for the Acer 720P ?

    The difference that I could spot in the specs between the C720 and the C720P is that the later has a touchscreen.

    http://www.amazon.de/Acer-C720P-29552G01AWW-Chromebook-Celeron-Touchscreen/dp/B00HFQYZMG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407450558&sr=8-1&keywords=Acer+C720

    BR
    Max.

    1. Hi,

      The C720P has it’s own codename in coreboot which I haven’t yet built. I’m happy to produce one for you, if you buy the device, but obviously I can’t guarantee it will work and not brick.

      Having said that, I will build it with the same branch of ChromiumOS coreboot that the stock ROM was built with, so it *should* work.

      Let me know if you want it.

      John.

  23. Hey John,

    I have not found any information about unbricking a C720P if you’re build of coreboot for a C720P should not work. However, you do provide unbricking info for a Samsung. Will the procedure for unbricking a C720P be the same ?

    I do have a buspirate here, but not the SOIC clip that you used.

    Max

    1. The chip will be in a different place, but all the SPI chips in Chromebooks have the same pin assignment (they’re mostly Winbond and Macronix). So, the procedure is pretty much identical once you’ve got the thing opened, and the chip located.

  24. Hi John,
    Thanks for replying to my earlier comment. I’ve tried to flash C720 to the latest ROM in your archive, but I’m afraid it has failed.

    I followed the instructions here: https://johnlewis.ie/mediawiki/index.php?title=Flashing_coreboot_build_to_stock_firmware_or_different_coreboot_build_on_Acer_C7_(C710)

    But the new ROM cannot be verified:
    natalie@natalieCBOOK:~/Downloads$ sudo ./flashrom –wp-statusflashrom v0.9.4 : 14ce0cf : Oct 09 2013 22:16:28 UTC on Linux 3.13.0-32-generic (i686), built with libpci 3.1.10, GCC 4.7.x-google 20130114 (prerelease), little endian
    WP: status: 0x0000
    WP: status.srp0: 0
    WP: status.srp1: 0
    WP: write protect is disabled.
    WP: write protect range: start=0x00000000, len=0x00000000
    natalie@natalieCBOOK:~/Downloads$ sudo ./flashrom -w coreboot-peppy-seabios-180714.rom
    flashrom v0.9.4 : 14ce0cf : Oct 09 2013 22:16:28 UTC on Linux 3.13.0-32-generic (i686), built with libpci 3.1.10, GCC 4.7.x-google 20130114 (prerelease), little endian
    Erasing and writing flash chip… spi_block_erase_20 failed during command execution at address 0x0
    Verifying flash… VERIFY FAILED at 0x00000062! Expected=0xff, Read=0x0b, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x007fffff: 0x4
    Your flash chip is in an unknown state.
    Get help on IRC at irc.freenode.net (channel #flashrom) or
    mail flashrom@flashrom.org with FAILED: your board name in the subject line!
    ——————————————————————————-
    DO NOT REBOOT OR POWEROFF!
    FAILED

    I take it this is because the spi_block_erase_20 failed and I’m wondering if it is safe to turn my C720 off at this point or if it’s bricked.

    1. It hasn’t failed. That’s a standard error. It’s safe to reboot. BTW, there’s a script to download and flash the ROM for you now, and it has newer ROM’s in it.

  25. Hello John,
    I was thinking about giving this little c710 an upgrade to windows but the more i read the less encouraged i am. It seems like not everything works properly which makes me wonder could i download things like Skype and Google chrome if i were to install windows 7 onto this laptop? I also want to play games on this laptop but again it seems like the download function may not work i know your busy but a response would be greatly appreciated before i start working on getting windows on the chromebook.

    1. Hey, AFAIK there is no reason why things like Skype and Google Chrome won’t work. So, as long as you don’t mind doing without the onboard keyboard/mouse and power-saving Windows should be okay. What do you mean the “download function may not work”?

  26. I have an Acer c710-2055 chromebook running your custom bios. I wanted to try and replace the soldered processor with a socket so a new processor can be put in. Would replacing the processor be likley and would the bios I’m using that you made work with the new processor? Thanks in advance

    1. I think it should do, yes, as long as the processor is known to work with a Sandybridge/Ivybridge chipset. The C720 has an i3 option, and all that changes as far as a coreboot build is concerned, is the PCI ID’s of the graphics card. If you are running my latest C710 build it will have a “links” file in which means any graphics card with a product ID between 0106 and 0196 will automatically be picked up. The 1007u Ivybridge C710’s have a graphics ID of 0156, for instance.

  28. i have tried running the script but i keep getting this error ;
    bash: cur1: command not found!!!!, kindly assist sir,i want to install ubuntu 12.10

  29. suspend is not working for my c720. I tried all fixes posted. bodhi should work out of the box. it does for everyone else that has a c720 except for the people with a c720 that installed your rom. I am not the only one with this problem. I am going to revert back to standard bios now. Hope this helps someone.

    1. No need to get shirty.

      I have identified that the Peppy ROM still had TPM support in it’s DSDT file, which would’ve been causing the suspend problems. It has since been removed. You’re welcome to try the latest and confirm if it’s suitable if you like.

    2. I’d also like to point out that Google/coreboot have a “team” of paid developers to quality control their ROM’s, whereas I’m just “Me, Myself, and Irene”, downloading and putting the bits together so that people in the community can benefit (with a little help from the Google devs at times). It isn’t a business, and I don’t demand any payment. I think you, and anyone else with the same attitude, need to adjust your expectations …

  30. I appologize for the tone. I was a little frustrated. Thank you for your reply. I will try the latest as you recommended. Thank You.

  31. This may seem stupid but I must have been between messages with you. I am sorry for my comments. It has been very frustrating trying to fix this suspend issue on the c720, been trying for days! I do appreciate what you are doing for the community. And I should have adjusted my attitude considering your not getting paid and all. I want to sincerely apologize for the way I spoke to you. And this may look dumb but I want to try to make it right and let you know, I was in the wrong and if I could delete the comment before me I would. Just got a hot head. Trying to do better. Thanks again for the rom. The update fixed the supend issue.

    1. Yeah, I was writing my second response whilst you were writing your first apology. Let’s just call it water under the bridge. Could you just do me a favour though? Let other people know that the suspend issue is fixed, if you’ve been on any forum telling people about the broken one, or if you see it any where. Glad it’s sorted out.

  32. yes I posted to Jeff on the bodhi forums about the c720 and suspend. I updated my post so others would see the fix.
    Thanks again. works great now. lol

  33. I’ve installed seabios version 1.7.5-040914-10:53-johnlewis.ie on an Acer C720.

    The BIOS seems to have installed successfully, but I can’t seem to ever get the boot menu up.
    It says “Press ESC for boot menu” but doesn’t respond to keypresses, and after a few seconds, attempts to boot from the hard disk instead of USB.

    Unfortunately the hard disk contains an original ChromeOS installation and does not seem to boot successfully via SeaBIOS, but I can’t figure out how to get my USB (containing Linux) to be booted.

    Help most appreciated.

  34. Follow up to previous post:
    Plugging in a USB keyboard allowed me to hit ESC and interact with the boot menu. After booting up, the regular laptop keyboard works OK.

  35. Dear Mr. Lewis,

    Thank you for all the work you’ve done creating these ROMS and the continuation of this website!

    I desire to use your recently created scripts to replace the Chrome OS BIOS within my HP Chromebook 14 (Falco). I viewed your video of August on YouTube and suspect that predated your scripts? So I’m not certain the sequence shown in the video is the same for both how it was then and how it is now within the execution of your scripts?

    My challenge is that I have a 128GB SSD to swap out with the original 16GB SSD. So I am uncertain if within the execution of your scripts there would be a point where I could safely replace (power down?) the SSD or would I be able to host the original 16GB out on a USB adapter to permit the initial setup of computer to connect with your website, while having the new 128GB SSD already mounted in the CB14F?

    Thanks for your time and your thoughts.

    regards,

    Marc Lines

    1. The Jeltka menu system has been simplified since that initial release. Updated instructions are in the video description there. I would do an updated video but it took me quite a long time the last time.

      The simplest thing might be to swap the SSD *first* then run ChromeOS recovery and go from there running my script and Jeltka. Do you know if the stock firmware recognises your new SSD okay?

    1. I think this has been addressed on the community, but for anyone else reading this Jeltka has changed slightly since that initial release, but updated instructions are in the video description. I didn’t think it was worth doing a whole new video for.

  37. Hello again,

    Thank you for such a quick response. Off hand I don’t know if the HP 14F would recognize the new 128GB SSD as it is. I have it partitioned -unallocated. From your observation I’ll attempt to load up the Chrome OS on it and install it in place of the original SSD. Then I’ll carry on per your instructions.
    If I achieve success, you’ll be remunerated (modestly).

    Thank you for your assist,

    Marc

    1. Yes, but which SSD model are you going to install? A number of people, including myself, have had problems with the 128GB MyDigitalSSD SC2 Super Cache 2 42mm SATA III 6G M.2 NGFF Solid State Disk almost completely dying after 6 months (one guy had his die after 2), so if you’re installing that one, make sure you keep very regular backups! I’m not sure whether the speed was iffy too.

    1. According to others on the community, the likes of Transcend and Intel are starting to produce NGFF drives, though I don’t think they’re available everywhere, yet. Personally, I’ve purchased a 128GB USB stick which I use for all my compiling (I have it automatically mounted at boot to the Downloads directory), and have gone back to the stock drive. I was trying to mount it on $HOME, but the damned stick is so slow it blocks Chrome, etc from working in a timely manner.

  40. Hola buenas noches
    deseo su ayuda
    lo que paso es que intente hacer la instalación de windows 7 en el acer Chromebook 720 y ya no aparece nada cuando lo enciendo pero el boton de encendido parpadea y cuando pulso el boton de encendido mas el boton de actualizar(Creo que es el F4) la luz que indica el encendido del equipo parpadea y esto e hace pensar que la computadora todavía tiene salvacion por favor ayuda necesito salvar esta computadora toda las ayudas que me pueden brindar se las agradezco esto es un problema grande para mi me ha ocasionado muchos problemas y discusiones gracias de nuevo por las ayudas

  41. La verdad no se que ROM Ni que Flash utilice eso fue hace ya casi como 4 meses y tuve muchos problemas con un familiar y deseo arreglarlo para solucionar todo esto no pensé que se volviera tan grave, cuando presiono el boton de encendido mas el boton de actualizar (F4) la luz de encendido parpadea ayúdeme señor john dígame si ya se daño el chromebook o se puede hacer algo no quiero discutir mas por esto quiero que mi familiar este bien y reconozco mi error y quiero hacer todo lo que este a mi alcance para solucionarlo

    1. Estoy teniendo problemas para descifrar lo que quiere decir que hay . Si uno de mis ROMs ha parpadeado , presionando F4 no hará nada . Si usted (o alguien más ) no se ha inflamado una de mis ROMs para esta máquina entonces yo no te puedo ayudar .

  42. Buenos Días John
    perdón por mi ignorancia en este tema la verdad no se mucho. lo que yo hice fue intentar seguir el procedimiento para instalar windows 7 en un acer chromebook 720 quite el tornillo de seguridad y realice los pasos (creí que lo había hecho bien) pero reinicie la computadora para insertar la usb con el sistema operativo pero solo se quedo la pantalla negra el led de encendido parpadea cuando presiono el botón de encendido mas el boton con el símbolo de actualizar(creo que me equivoque porque parece que es el F3 porque empiezo a contar después de la tecla ESC y seria el F3 ) buscando encontré que estos son los archivos que descargue desde su pagina ( coreboot-c710-1007u-170214.rom y coreboot-peppy-07042014 (1).rom ) y eso es lo que he hecho ya hace 5 meses y por mas que voy a cualquier centro de servicio nadie sabe la solución , señor john pregunteme que yo respondo cualquier inquietud, parece que nuestra zona horaria tiene una gran diferencia pero créame que cada hora reviso para saber si usted me responde porque creo que es el único que me puede dar una esperanza muchas gracias Señor John por el tiempo que le ha dedicado a leer mis mensajes mi nombre es Juan fernando Perea y Vivo en cali Colombia

    1. Necesito saber cuál de esas ROMs que brilló – si es el primero, que ha ladrillera su dispositivo , ya que está pensado para un C710 ( de ahí el nombre ) . Por favor avise .

  43. Hi John, I have a doubt about the whole SSD swapping procedure and would like to have your advice before spending money on a new one. Basically as far as I know, the recomended procedure is to swap the SSD before removing ChromeOS, let ChromeOS restore itself on the new one, and then install coreboot, linux, etc. But I have a doubt, what if the SSD fails after some months (seems to happen a lot with MyDigitalSSD brand) and I have already flashed coreboot? I can’t reinstall ChromeOS after flashing coreboot, right? Or can I swap the SSD freely after flashing your ROM? Thanks a lot for your time, and your hard work!

    1. You can install ChromeOS from a SeaBIOS only ROM like mine, using Arnold The Bat’s ChromiumOS builds, and then a script to upgrade it to full-blown ChromeOS. You can also swap the SSD freely after flashing my ROM, anyway.

  45. muchas gracias john, tengo dos preguntas mas la primera tiene usted de casualidad la rom original de el acer chromebook c720 o una pagina donde pueda descargarla y la segunda es cuando usted dice pirata bus es igual a un programador, le adjunto el link de lo que creo que es un pirata bus en mi país http://articulo.mercadolibre.com.co/MCO-411923745-programador-quemador-de-microcontroladores-pics-y-eeproms-_JM espero su respuesta muchas gracias señor John

  48. Mr. Lewis Thank you for your scripts and the new Bios.
    I ran your script on the Acer C710-2833 with the Parrot Corella A-D 4552 model#.
    just wanted to mention that you Have to boot into dev and log in to chrome. then use the Ctrl +t to get to the command line screen and type Shell to get to the root shell. then run your script commands and Poof…. EVERYTHING works just like clock work.
    I even set the new boot up to be automatic to bring up Ubuntu.
    after confirming that it boot properly, I removed the old 16 gig drive that contained ChromeOS and replaced it with a 32 gig card and set bootup onto USB1. Therefore able to install from external DVD. I then installed Ubuntu 13.10! Yet another clockwork installation. Everything seems to be working just fine and NO problems with booting up…. Everything is working on the C710 except fot the touchpad. As I had read in your FAQs that this might happen it was ecpected and as I have a USB Unity plug and wireless mouse, it doesn’t bother me a bit.
    I am one happy user. Bye-bye crometrash hello Lenux Box.
    Just ordered a 256gig SSD for it…
    Again! Thank you for all your hard work and VERY usefull stable scripts and programs/Bios!
    Richard

  50. Hi
    I have a C7 and tried the manual method from https://johnlewis.ie/mediawiki/index.php?title=Flashing_stock_firmware_to_a_coreboot_build_on_Acer_C7_(C710) before I found the script, but I have a problem I can’t see anything on Google about.
    The first flashrom instruction (–wp-disable) finished with a SUCCESS flag, but the rom backup commands fail with the following message (as does the script, at the same point):

    The Flash Descriptor Security Override Strap-Pin is set. Restrictions implied
    by the FRAP and FREG registers are NOT in effect. Please note that Protected
    Range (PR) restrictions still apply.
    Reading flash… backup-290914.rom: Read-only file system
    FAILED.FAILED

    Any ideas?
    Thanks for your help :)

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