ROM Download

Please note: I no longer maintain, provide, or support custom Chromebook firmware; this page is left here for archive purposes only.

This page contains a command to download and run a script, which will flash custom firmware with a SeaBIOS payload on approaching 40 models of Intel based Chromebook – allowing you to run an alternative OS such as Linux. The script will work with ChromeOS or pretty much any Linux distro (at least no one has told me otherwise).

There are 3 types of firmware mod – RW_LEGACY, BOOT_STUB, and Full ROM – not all Chromebooks work with each one:

  • RW_LEGACY modifies a 2MB section of the ROM leaving the stock functionality intact, including the scary developer screen, and will not brick your device. Some Chromebooks already come with a working RW_LEGACY slot, although many of them do not (non-functional keyboard on Panther, non-functional display on Auron_Yuna, or just plain missing, etc.). As well as fixing aforementioned bugs, updating the RW_LEGACY slot can enable further functionality such as booting from SD card/eMMC. So, even in the case of a functioning stock RW_LEGACY, it may be fortuitous to update.

  • BOOT_STUB modifies the last 1MB of the ROM, removing the scary developer screen, but also removes the ability to run ChromeOS natively, carrying a chance of bricking your device. This also leaves the “REFRESH + POWER” functionality of the stock ROM intact, meaning, when you press these keys, the device will immediately reboot and attempt to run ChromeOS Recovery (which isn’t there any more), and give you a blank screen. The only way to then stop it from attempting to run ChromeOS Recovery on every boot, is to take the device apart and disconnect the battery.

  • Full ROM, as the name suggests, is a complete ROM containing a coreboot build with a slice of SeaBIOS on top, and is the most risky. Again, this will remove the ability to run ChromeOS natively. Flashing one of these will wipe out your product data. In the case of Sandy/Ivybridge Chromebooks a full ROM enables hardware virtualisation extensions and suspend. Other models full ROM’s also probably contain idiosyncrasies that the stock firmware does not.

You need to be in dev mode and to have disabled write-protect by enabling a jumper/removing a screw (usually the latter, located somewhere on the main board). Disabling write-protect is not necessary when flashing RW_LEGACY unless you want to make the legacy slot default. See each respective supported Chromebook’s developer information page (if available) for info on opening your Chromebook up and disabling write-protect.

[TABLE=3]

Jenkins is now being used along with some scripts, to automate building, and to reduce chances of a brick from human error. Run the script like so, making sure you are only in Crosh shell *not* the *root* Crosh shell if running from ChromeOS:

cd;bash <(curl https://johnlewis.ie/flash_cb_fw.sh)

If for some reason you need to run an older build, you will have to flash it manually. See the ROM Archive.

Please note: I no longer maintain, provide, or support custom Chromebook firmware; this page is left here for archive purposes only.

Join the conversation

1295 Comments

  1. please, help me fix my chromebook. I was trying to install windows 7after flashing the bios. i followed all steps but i couldn’t boot in windows seven successfully. now my laptop has gone crazy because it is showing gnu grub version2.00 and i dont know what to do. please help.

  2. The laptop hasn’t gone crazy – you’ve either flashed the grub version of that ROM or you’ve inadvertently installed a Linux distro!

    What do you want to do with it? Flash another ROM that just has SeaBIOS?

    1. If you followed the instructions, you would have a backup of your original BIOS which you can flash back.

      Failing that, you can install one of Arnold The Bat’s Chromium builds and then use a script to upgrade it to straight ChromeOS. If ChromeOS support is missing from the ROM of mine you flashed, it will complain about an invalid hardware ID, and won’t update automatically, but other than that it works fine (I have done this myself).

      HTH.

  4. 1. Recent Chrome auto-updates now load a 64 bit kernel, and actually enable and provide bluetooth support previously absent. Machine is Acer C710-2847 with 4Gb ram and had the latest Google pushed update the last week of March 2014.

    2. The flashrom version downloaded with other firmware updates files for ChromeOS now reports itself to be: flashrom v0.9.4 :e545493: Dec 03 2013 UTC on Linux 3.11.0-19-generic (x86_64), built with libpci 3.1.10, GCC 4.8.x-google 20130905 (prerelease), little endian

    3. Perhaps because of this, when doing the CoreBoot flash of
    parrot-seabios-suspend-27101213.rom from inside ChromeOS, there were NO errors reported! It simply reported at the end: flash verified, SUCCESS. This was concerning, but I finally rebooted as there was little else I could do. It appeared to have worked.

    4. Initially, the machine booted, and a fresh Xubuntu iso was installed from USB without issue. However, after OS install, booting seemed flakey and would sometimes fail in seemingly random ways (kernel 3.11.0-19):
    -it would freeze as soon as CoreBoot tried to load grub.
    -grub would start, then it would freeze part way through.
    -boot would proceed, but a short burst of text display would blink on screen then vanish, and then it would freeze.
    -the ‘boxed’ grub boot menu would randomly appear even if not requested.
    -using the ‘boxed’ menu, either the default full boot selection would freeze, or the ‘safe mode’ selection would freeze. If one froze, then the other would likely work next time.
    -the grub ‘splash’ screen would sometimes not appear, or blink on briefly, and then the underlying text would display.
    – sometimes the ‘splash’ screen would appear, then freeze and the spinner would stop. (I finally did a grub change to not display splash in order to see more messages)
    -boot would proceed, but get partway through the long process startup list, then fail to start X, leaving a blank black screen but the F1-6 text consoles were up.
    – sometimes the displayed process list was shorter, sometimes longer. With spash, the time it was displayed would vary also.
    -boot would complete, but trackpad not working (known issue) Sometimes several machine shutdown/reboots were required even with several minutes of off time. Those restarts would also exhibit various behaviors listed above.
    -boot would complete and OS would work fine (except for SD card reader).
    Oddly, this condition was random and not consistently repeatable, but, also oddly, gradually after lots off booting, it appeared to get better. I did make several grub-updates to change delay times and get more visibility into how boot was progressing. It now seems to have decided to work pretty consistently as expected. For a while it did seem to be worse when a suspend had happened previously, but nothing seems consistently repeatable, and often several reboots were required before OS came up. Once running, the OS seems working (with the exception of the SD card slot).

    5. There are number of dmesg lines that indicate a possible issues during boot, but I don’t know just what they all really mean or if they are truly important.

    6. There are dmesg ACPI warnings about System IO conflicts
    and suggestions to not use the native driver.

    7. There are dmesg: [drm] messages:
    [drm] Wrong MCH_SSKPD value 0x16040307
    [drm] This can cause pipe underruns and display issues.
    [drm] Please upgrade bios to fix.

    7. As mentioned above, the SD card slot is now very unreliable, most often not seeing a card insertion, and spitting out a lot of console messages about waiting for interrupts, unable to read sectors, corrupt data, block errors, etc. Attempts to write to a recognized card generally results in trashed data being stored. The same cards would work OK in a USB card reader or in the slot Chrubuntu linux 2847 machine. Again some of the dmesg entries imply a memory assignment overlap. Could this be due to a bios memory initialization/assignment issue?

    8. With regard to boot being flakey with X, there’s dmesg entries that ‘host bridge window conflicts with Video ROM’…so again, a bios initialization issue?

    9. I tried re-flashing with a version you suggested to someone else on their blog, but which isn’t posted elsewhere dated 21040130-125427. That exhibited similar initial strangeness, but also calmed down after a time. It does seem less problematic.

    10. However, when trying to flash the later CoreBoot rom file, I was unable to use your flashrom that wants external libs. It complained it couldn’t find them, even though they were installed exactly where it was looking. I tried running the self-contained Google ChromOS flashrom from the previously archived updates files downloaded with chrome flash-updater , and it at least would read, so I tried the using it to write, and it worked and verified the flash as it had done under ChromOS.

    11. Other than the flakey boot, and non-functioning SD slot, all the other things I’ve tried, mostly various USB perpherals like TV tuner stick, external CD rom drive, Second Life game that pounds CPU and graphics, all seem fully functional.

    I’d love to enter a dialog with you about the issues above, and I’ll be happy to provide you with full dmesg and other log dumps if they will help. Just tell me what you’d like to see.
    I’d also be glad to help with the suspend testing you mentioned. I’m mostly a hardware guy, not a programmer, but if you tell me what you want to see or how to run a test, I’ll try to obtain results for you.

    Being this >< close to having everything working is really encouraging. I have 24 more of these machines to upgrade from Chrubuntu if we can solve the remaining issues.

    1. The absence of the flashing error is also caused by having recovered with a Bus Pirate (since this simultaneously bypasses and removes the overwrite protection until you reflash to stock).

      Proper suspend is being prevented by missing code in the upstream kernel/distro.

      I can neither confirm or deny if there are SD card problems with the ROM itself, since I generally don’t use them.

      It sounds to me like more of a hardware problem, have you tried loading a distro on one of the other C710’s you have? I’d also be keen to confirm that you verified the ISO file you installed with with it’s md5sum. Now, other people have reported issues with the track-pad not working at boot/after suspend, but over and above that you are the first out of many to have the booting issues.

      I’d also recommend Fedora, since it supports the 2nd generation Chromebooks quite a bit better than Ubuntu/Debian derivatives.

      Sorry if I missed something, your comment is a bit tl;dr.

  5. Some quick answers:
    The machine was new factory stock and the warranty seal was intact when I started. Chrubuntu was on it for a short time, but no rom changes. Undid developer mode back to plain Chrome before doing CoreBoot. That’s when the Google push update took it to 64 bit.

    It seems to be suspending ok: shut the lid, back alive with the screensaver password. Can move the mouse around, type, and launch progs that work. No obvious problems. These don’t normally run on batteries, so no info on battery life.

    Possible hardware problem was considered. But it worked fine as regular ChromeBook, and then 2 weeks as Chrubuntu before becoming a CoreBoot testbed. All hardware was functional, and booted both OS’s without issues. Card slot also worked.

    Other 24 machines all have Chrubuntu, but I’ve only tried Coreboot rom on one so far. Right now, others are in regular use, but when I can break one loose, I’ll try CoreBoot on it.

    Xubuntu USB iso and CoreBoot rom were checksumed OK. I learned long ago that few moments to check is way better than hours spent assuming that files were intact. :)

    I can try Fedora once I free up a box. Our application needs XFCE environment for its kiosk mode to lock them down in a semi-public setting. I’m not a fan of Ubuntu since they went off on the Unity tangent, but the easy install a year ago was Xubuntu with Chrubuntu method.

    I apologize for the long post before, but I wanted to get the salient observed details out for consideration.

  6. Hi.
    I’m followed you instructions and getting a red screen with build “coreboot-c710-1007u-170214.rom” on Acer C710…
    It says it was complete and successfully, but after reboot I get this:
    Photo: http://puu.sh/89YKk.jpg

    Is my device now brigged?

    Ask

    1. As long as you have a C710, it is unlikely that one of those ROM’s will completely brick a device. If you happen to use the 1007u ROM for an 847 based C710 (or vice-versa), all it will do is stop the graphics from working. In this case you can either fly “blind” or login over SSH (assuming you have an SSH server enabled). Make a Fedora 20 USB stick, switch the device on, then press escape, and then “2” to boot from USB – once the kernel loads I think it will initialise the graphics (although I’m not 100% on that).

  7. Hi.

    I think you are right… It’s not acting like a dead notebook, just the display looks like it don’t work.

    I need to make a stick like that you described.
    If I’m press ESC on start, the display don’t show up. If I press 1 and Enter, the red screen appears. If I press 2 and Enter nothing happens at the time. Currently I’m trying a Windows 8 Stick.
    Is there something special I need for the bootable stick?

    I will write you again.

    Ask

  8. Hello friends, I recently installed the coreboot-c710-1007u-170214.rom firmwere nootbook on my Acer C710-2856, which has Celeron 847 processor, and it did not work over the video. When I plug in an external monitor it switches the video, but you get error messages. How can I do to reverse the process? Please I need help!

    1. You can either type the necessary commands in ‘blind’ or login over SSH (assuming you have an SSH server installed and running).

      The prebuilt firmware page does actually tell you *not* to flash that ROM to an 847 based C710 …

  9. Hi again.

    Did you have a fast idea or tipp for an distribution that I just can put on an usb and booting a full SSH Server?

    Ask

    1. I would use Fedora. If you create the USB stick with Fedora’s Live USB Creator it will have “persistent” storage. So, you set a password for the root user (sudo passwd root), install SSH (sudo yum install openssh), and set it to start (sudo systemctl enable sshd.service), all on another machine, then boot from that USB stick on the Chromebook.

  10. Hello again John Lewis!
    I am grateful for your attention to help us, but do not speak English and have difficulties in translating and understanding. You could do a quick video (tutorial) how can we do to return the chomebook C-710 based on the Celeron 847 as it was previously? Or how to create this ssh server and make it work due to the repair? Firstly thank you for understanding!

    1. I don’t really have time for that at the moment, sorry. Returning to stock is detailed on the Wiki and also on Barry Schultz’s website. I would recommend you go there as James Fu and Barry Schultz have gone to quite a bit of effort to document this stuff.

  11. hi, well i have a chrome acer c710 but my question is if this work on this computer, i want to do a clean installation why i need virtual machine with windows, which ROM should I use to clean install ubuntu on my acer c7?

    sorry for my bad English but spoke not so entener’m also struggling with what little English that I can, thanks for the help

    1. Well, you can install Windows natively with the C710, but the keyboard and mouse will not work, plus you may well have stability issues.

      The latest suspend ROM is the one to use. Which model C710 do you have (with which processor)?

  12. hi, well first thanks for answer me, the processor is Intel® Celeron(R) CPU 847 @ 1.10GHz × 2, well and c710 says only the instruction manual, as saying last ROM, it does not help me for this processor so I would appreciate if orientaras ROM is to know that I can use for the installation of ubuntu 13.04 or 14.04 64 bit, thank you very much in advance greetings

  13. hi well, i am to can this and only I just wanted to be sure to fill the ROM to perform a clean installation of ubuntu on my acer chrome c7, am doing this and I hope everything goes well, that’ll take care suggested me the ROM and if all goes well will comment the results, thanks

  14. hi again, i have a question, well when i want can a copy of my rom, this appears:

    the flashrom descriptor security override strap-pin is set restriction implied by the FRAP and FREG registers are not in effect, please note that protected range

    wp:restriction: 0x0098
    wp:status.srp0:1
    wp:status.srp1:0

    is normal this?? or no, and affects the process into something or not I follow?

    1. Yeah, I think that’s okay – even when you have the jumper set there is still part of the first 4k of ROM (the firmware descriptor) which won’t write when overwriting the stock ROM.

  15. hello again sorry to bother but when I make a copy of my ROM, and first check the status of the flashrom with the following statement:
    flashrom -p internal:bus=spi –wp-status

    I get the following:
    flashrom v0.9.4: e3ab2f1: June 22, 2013 3:16:49 UTC on Linux 3.4.0 (i686) 3.1.10 libpci Built with GCC 4.7.x-google 20130114 (prerelease), little
    endian
    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.
    WP: status: 0x0098
    WP: status.srp0: ​​1
    WP: status.srp1: 0
    WP: write protect is enabled.
    WP: write protect range: start = 0x00400000, len = 0x00400000

    from what I understand I have the protection of read / write enabled but I have placed the bridge on the connector to disable the protection and gave me this message from the beginning, I request your kind help to proceed? thanks

  16. well, i need help, Now it appears that the following even when I do not have the jumper on the connector to disable the protection, what should I do? I do not want to continue without being sure to have a good copy of my rom for something that can go wrong

    1. Don’t worry too much – even if you copy with the write-protect enabled you can still put together a working ROM using your copy, plus some bits of the shell-ball ROM (mainly the ME binary). Barry schultz has some very good information on his site about putting the thing back together.

      Even if you couldn’t get your head around that, you can always just use the shell-ball ROM (but it won’t have serial number and correct HWID in).

  17. hi, good day, well, sorry for the panic only i want to ensure to do everything right, so is there any way to ensure that protection against write / read this, disabled?? or is good, assuming that place the jumper on connector protection must be disabled even if screen shows otherwise? thanks for the help

    1. Yes, run it from Crosh. I assume you already have developer mode enabled. If this stuff doesn’t make sense you probably shouldn’t be attempting to overwrite the firmware.

  19. and where in the Crosh? and is the single statement? and if in fact I have installed ubuntu 13.04 install the way you first came to do in this pc, the problem is that I need to create a virtual machine with windows and I’m trying to do this because I expect a clean install of ubuntu allows me to create the virtual machine, but when you install at that time did the procedure to enter developer mode and yesterday I went back to do the following instruction:
    ChromeOS-FirmwareUpdate – mode = todev
    I guess that says being in developer mode

  22. Just to let you know, I’m an atheist and secularist and I won’t tolerate religious comments on my website. So, I’m deleting this comment for the “GOD” reference.

  23. well, respect their preference, the issue here is not that, well only report that I could make with apparent success so far, the method and flashing my acer c7, thanks for the great help and congratulations for the work involved in all this, I installed raring ubuntu 13.04 but the touchpad does not work so now I ask for help to solve this problem, and also check if installing ubuntu this way you can create a virtual machine with windows? thank you very much for the help

    1. sudo modprobe -r cyapa
      sudo modprobe chromeos_laptop
      sudo modprboe cyapa

      Should do it.

      Yes, you can then install Windows in a VM, but, because the Celeron 847 doesn’t have PCI passthru, the sound is choppy. Video playback is okay though. VirtualBox is a good user friendly virtualisation software.

  24. hi, I get this, I update kernel before? or should I proceed?

    FATAL: Module cyapa not found

    thanks

    1. I would install a newer version of Ubuntu – upstream kernel support for the touchpad was only added in Feb ’13 and would therefore not have been in 13.04 at least initially (released in April ’13). You did try updating to get a newer kernel? It may also be worth trying ‘backports’ if you are determined to stay at 13.04.

  25. well, firt comment that i update ubuntu 14.04 but i can’t install a virtual machine, any idea or help with this, how to install a virtual machine on this computer with ubuntu 14.04 32 bits and run windows? thanks

  26. hi, well, i have virtual box on this acer c710-2847, my OS is ubuntu 14.04 32 bits but i can’t run windows xp on virtual machine, i need help with this, you can sayme to could you tell me where to start to install windows in a virtual machine,thanks

    1. It’s beyond the scope of the stuff I provide. There is a lot of information available on the web related to installing Windows in a VM. Can I suggest you do a web search?

  27. good day, if and searched the web but for the special case of the chromebook does not apply a “normal” procedure in the network are a couple of videos of more than any that I have run windows in a virtual machine on a acer c7 but some do not mention how they did it and others just leave some scrip with the “procedure” but the same comments from those who have used the scrip say it does not work and until the system stops working demo after running the scrip, just think of me a good idea to ask the one who knows, but I will continue aver looking good if I succeed, and even here his instructions were a great help so I am very grateful, good afternoon / night

    1. It’s only not a “normal” procedure on stock Chromebooks. Because you installed one of my ROM’s your Chromebook will now act (to all intents and purposes) like a standard laptop. Therefore you can simply use one of the many Ubuntu-Virtualbox howto’s out there to achieve your aim. Understood?

  28. well actually already try 3 times and now I’m trying again but not e able to run windows in virtual box, when I create the virtual machine and then try to make it run with the iso that I have windows xp tells me the bootable device is not works even when the same already used in other occasion and to install xp on another machine, I’ll keep trying, anyway … what else can I do the same way agradesco your help to install a “normal” way (for say so) on this computer, just one last question, with the ROM you put it, which is what I recommended me, I install windows xp? or would have to place another ROM?? thanks

    1. If you are talking about installing Windows XP natively, you would want to flash the ROM with “windows” in the name, and bear in mind that it doesn’t work well (no trackpad/keyboard/powersaving and possible crashes).

  29. John, I’m having issues with the write-protect jumper step. I have a refurbished Acer C710. In what strikes me as gratuitous violence, the jumper pins were actually *removed* during the refurb process. You can see the little nubs where they were. So I very carefully jumped those with aluminum foil held on with electrical tape. But when I go through the first step (sudo flashrom –wp-disable) it returns that write-protect is still enabled.

    I’m 99% sure I have good contact on those jumper “pins”. I re-did it three times. I’ve fixed automated DNA sequencers. I really am pretty sure it ought to be doing its thing.

    So my question is, have you heard of anybody having a similar problem? Web searches turn up nothing. What’s with grinding down the jumper pins?! Has anybody else reported that? Is there a chance they’ve done something weird with the firmware?? Or is the likeliest thing that I don’t have contact across the jumper after all?

    And, do you have any suggestions for me? :D

    1. Are you sure the pins weren’t just broken off? If you can’t get good contact with foil, other suggestions include a small watch screwdriver carefully wedged between the pins, or a trimmed down HD jumper.

      If you run ‘crossystem’ it tells you the status of the jumper both at boot and runtime, which might help shed a bit more light.

  30. Thanks! I’ll go get the thing jumped again and try that. Will report back.

    No, the pins aren’t broken off. The whole female jumper connector is removed. I’ll link to a picture as soon as I get it off the camera.

    1. Well, that’s the way it comes – they don’t provided a “jumper” as such, you have to make your own …

      Some of the Chromebooks use a switch or a screw, which is much more civilised. :)

  31. Email me. I am more than happy to make “donation” for working bios windows 7 with mouse/keyboard for C710-2856 (Celeron/Ivybridge).

    Currently running Chrome & crubuntu 14.04 LTS
    Hardware bumped to 4gb RAM and 128 samsung SSD

    Worried about brick flashing this model and looking for detailed steps, specifically for this model relating to win7.

    Thanks.

    1. The BIOS/firmware isn’t the problem in relation to Windows and the mouse/keyboard on Chromebooks. Missing driver for the Google i2c device is. I don’t have the expertise to write the driver, and I don’t think I would want to spend the time if I did.

  32. On the topic of Ivy Bridge C710s, mine reliably crashes on resume with the rom posted above and linux 3.1[345]. Your changes for the 847 say that resume was fixed. Are any of those changes applicable for the 1007u?

    1. Not really. I don’t think the “fix” actually changed very much – battery usage is still not great in suspend, and it didn’t crash before. I tied myself up in a knot trying to get something that works properly for the ASUS Chromebox, so I’m burnt out of it at the moment. Maybe in a few weeks.

  33. I followed your procedure to the latter – doing it in Kenya. Erasing and writing flash chip was successful. After shutting down, the machine displays a black screen but power is on. What Do I do?

    1. They all do. The Bus Pirate is an SPI programmer (among other things), the cable connects the Bus Pirate to the SOIC clip, and the clip attaches directly to the ROM chip on the C710 (you have to remove the board from the C710 and turn it over to get to the chip). To get your machine working again you *have* to use an external programmer as detailed here.

  38. Hello!
    First – thank you for your work! I have C720, flashed prebuilt coreboot and finally got rid of Google Chrome recovery screen.
    My question – is there any chance making firmware that allows suspend to ram?
    I beleive I’ve tried all the workarounds described on the web (pm-utils, systemd, kernel related), but C720 keeps on rebooting upon wake up…
    Thanks!

    1. You’re welcome. If power-saving is an issue, I would recommend going back to stock, since I don’t know how to sort it out. Either that or compile your own ROM and ask on the coreboot mailing list.

  40. Hey thank john lewis for your support for the community.

    I ran into a little problem, I have th c710-2856 and flashed to the proper rom successfully: “http://johnlewis.ie/coreboot-parrot-grub2-good-23102013.rom”. I shutdown the computer, but it seems to take forever. so i just manually press the power button.

    I start the laptop up again, “GNU GRUB version 2.00″, *Load SeaBIOS, Scan for OS on internal HDD”, I choose “Load Seabios” – ‘Booting “Load Seabios”‘, then its a blank screen. Did i brick my machine?

  42. hey friend congratulation for your work, i have one chromebook c710-2055, i’d make all you do and now i have a problem whit the windows don’t work the keyword and touchpad. have you some solution for this?

  43. Hey John,

    I apologize for arousing your frustrations. I’ve read through many ignorant comments here. So I understand.

    I’m pretty damn sure the c710-2856 is a Celeron 847 c710 laptop as stated. And in the video by Johnny Phung he mentions you and to donate. Anyways he uses the same ROM as I have mentioned to flash the c710 laptop.

    It is weird why the Rom in question is giving me this weird bios “GNU Grub 2.0”

    So anyways please guide me briefly. I just want it to go back to stock from here.

    I can manage to get to the command prompt of this “GNU Grub 2.0” . I know you have a guide for flashing back with Ubuntu installed, but I am stuck at this strange bios.

  44. I also made a backup of the original bios. Only question is how do i do via command prompts on this “Gnu Grub 2.0”.

  45. Hey John,

    Thank you for showing me the link for “live USB from within Grub 2”. So I go into command line, started with the first line: “insmod ehci linux”, but right after that i get “unaligned pointer 0x1” “Aborted. Press any key to exit.”

    Is my laptop bricked?

  46. I’ve downloaded ubuntu 12.04 successfully but can’t get to the administrator root password. I’m allowed the use of the password “user” only, which doesn’t give me access to many vital options. How do I change the root password which is indicated by (*****) unknown to me? Thank you.

  47. Hi John, I’m having the same issue above as Doug where I flashed using the Seabios/Grub2 download for my Celeron 847 C710 Chromebook and I get a boot menu at startup and which allows me to choose SeaBios or Grub 2. If I choose SeaBios and have a flash drive connected to the USB port my flash drive flashes quite a number of times but then the screen just hangs and says decompressing linux and then nothing… If I choose Grub 2 it just errors out with the same message above as Doug “unaligned pointer 0×1 Aborted. Press any key to exit.” Is there anyway to fix this problem? Maybe buy using the Grub Command line which works but what is strange is when I do an ls command, it goes back to the same error “unaligned pointer 0×1 Aborted. Press any key to exit.” When I use the set command to see what is set, I see boot=memdisk? is this correct? Or should it be set to something else??? Thanks, Mark.

    1. Hi Mark,

      Are you positive that your C710 is in fact a Celeron 847 based model? We have had 2 in the last few days where the specs on Amazon state that it’s an 847 when in fact it’s a 1007u (with different graphics ID’s).

      The fact that you get a “decompressing Linux” message sounds encouraging, i.e. that it is actually getting as far as attempting to boot the kernel. Try booting this way again, and press TAB to edit the kernel cmd line, removing the “quiet” option, so that we might see what it’s getting stuck on.

      “boot=memdisk” is fine – “memdisk” refers to in memory disk emulation that is loaded from/by the ROM.

  48. My model number says it’s a C710-2856. I checked specs on various sites and all say my chromebook should have Celeron 847. But when I checked with chrome://system it says the CPU is 1007u. I am a bit confused. Its a refurbished Acer Chromebook.

  49. Now I think so too. I was about to download the ROM for Celeron 847. Only then I looked at the command “cat /proc/cpuinfo” that you mentioned and found out that I had 1007u instead.

  50. John, thanks for responding and your time.

    Trying to edit the grub menu line just gets me the message:
    Booting a command list (and then once again the error message of) the unaligned pointer 0x1 Aborted. Press any key to exit. Quiet is not even listed on the line when I go to edit it.

    I didn’t do a /proc/cpuinfo to find out the name of the processor but I did some research based on the numbers found on the sticker on the bottom of the computer and saw that that it was a Celeron 847 pocessor. When I boot up the computer I get the following two choices:
    Load SeaBIOS
    Scan for OS on internal HD
    If I choose Load SeaBIOS I get a message that says:
    Booting ‘Load SeaBios’
    And then the screen clears and I get the following message:

    early console in decompress_kernel
    KASLR using RDTSC…

    Decompressing Linux… Parsing ELF… Performing relocations… done.
    Booting the kernel. (Then it just hangs)
    —————————————————
    If I choose Scan for OS on internal HDD
    I get the error message of: unaligned pointer 0x1
    Aborted. Press any key to exit.

    As I mentioned before the computer does access the flash drive a number of times because I can see the flash drive’s light flash but nothing from the flash drive get loaded.

    Is there anyway to use the Grub Shell to boot from the flash drive? I can get to the Grub Shell and when I use the command boot. I get a message that says I must load the kernel first. Do I need to tell the grub shell where my kernel is located on the flash drive?

    1. Okay, Mark, when you load SeaBIOS and the screen clears, press ESC then “2” with a USB stick inserted, and it *should* boot (you won’t get any display till the kernel is at least partially loaded). That looks like the only way you are going to avoid the pointer error.

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