Unrecoverable chromebooks

[Sheridan]

Serves me right for singing the praises of chromebooks at our place, as 9 of them have spontaneously died. Just over a year old and they won't boot. I can get them to the recovery screen which simply says "Chrome OS is missing or damaged. Please remove all connected devices and start recovery" but at that point CTRL+D does nothing and inserting a USB with the downloaded recovery image does nothing either

 

So it looks like these are now scrap, which is a damn shame - has anyone else managed to work around this, or is it just a mainboard fault? I could try neverware but I'm assuming if it won't take the correct Acer image then its probably a non starter

[DavR]

I think at that stage it's either the mainboard or the storage that is toast tbh. If you press tab at the ChromeOS is missing or damaged screen (I think) it should give you the actual error message to help diagnose.

 

Sadly, as wonderful as these cheap devices are, they are horribly unrepairable when they go wrong. I always go for three year warranties as a minimum.

[TronXP]

We had similar with some lenovo's it was the storage chip on the mainboard. Replaced under warranty, I always highly recommend extended warranties on chromebooks.

[jthompson]

Never encountered that, but at that point I'd be thinking of disconnecting the battery and trying to drain flea power to see if that gets it anywhere.

[DavR]

Discussed on another thread specifically about the Lenovo 300e - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/222422-lenovo-300e-2nd-gen-mtk-spectacular-failure-rate.html

The error message for storage chip is "0x26 EC software sync error updating EC".

[Sheridan]

We tested removing the battery on one, and it booted with mains power! So its looks like the batteries are completely toasted after just over a year. They must be faulty as the devices won't boot with them plugged in

 

Not sure whether its worth buying replacement batteries if they're that poor, but otherwise its just a box of e-waste!

[DavR]

That's interesting! I've not tried that fix before.

 

What models are these, out of interest?

[Sheridan]

These are Acer C733U's - we've now tried several and they will boot to recovery mode (which does nothing as above) with mains power only. Will not boot to anything on battery at all, but will boot normally with mains power and the battery removed. Very odd so we're tested a working battery in one of the faulty ones to see if its a dead battery or faulty board. Either way I'll be avoiding Acer chromebooks in the future with such a high failure rate so early in their life!

[jthompson]

We tested removing the battery on one, and it booted with mains power!

 

Oh wow. I wasn't expecting that to actually work.

[Sheridan]

Defo dead battery, swapped one from a working chromebook and it worked again. So if we can find some decent priced batteries we can resurrect these. Doesn't speak well for the longevity of this particular model though

[jmak]

If they're just over a year old, I'd try contacting Acer UK. I had a similar issue with some HP laptops a few years ago and got stroppy with them and they sent new batteries.

 

I quoted the Consumer Rights act (which I know doesn't apply to schools) which says that irrespective of warranty, goods must last a "reasonable" length of time and I didn't consider 13 months to be reasonable for a laptop.

 

If you bought them from an educational supplier it might be worth going through them as they'll be a bigger customer than you.

 

Nothing to lose...

[Koldov]

I'd second that especially with 9 devices all going pop at the same time with the same problem.

 

Got to be a case for a 'serious discussion' with somebody?

 

EDIT: I had a case with Acer about some projectors and was initially fobbed off with a warranty/guarantee date having run out a couple of years before hand. I did some of my own research into the problem and found out it was the DLP chip (white spots on the displayed image) and this had a much longer guarantee - so got them fixed for free!

 

Having said that, are batteries more on the 'user consumable' side as far as laptops go?

Edited September 30, 2021 by Koldov

[Sheridan]

I've asked the reseller if Acer might be inclined to some goodwill but I'm not hopeful. They're out of warranty and thats usually all they'll say. However with the original batteries being nearly half the cost of the original chromebooks thats Acer on our 'never buy again' list

 

We have 70 much older HP chromebooks and they're still great - battery still lasts 8 hours or so.

[DavR]

However with the original batteries being nearly half the cost of the original chromebooks thats Acer on our 'never buy again' list.

 

I'm finding similar getting parts for our Lenovo units. Warranty is covering most things, but broken screens etc I've had to source myself coming in at over half the original cost of the unit.

 

It's tempting to just replace with new, but, given we're maintaining what are currently matching classroom sets, I'm loathe to start mixing and matching.

 

I've found Dell to be more reliable, and when they're not, their parts are a lot more reasonably priced.