MrEprise

Yes a USB mouse works fine.

If I turn them on and use the key combo, a cursor shows on screen but I still can't move it with the trackpad which is odd. Maybe I'm just unlucky and these just have failing trackpads which means I'll have to send them back for repair, and use ASUS's horribly slow support portal (or at least it was just before Christmas.)

No, powerwash doesn't seem to bring either back to life.

Does anyone know if there is a key combination in Chrome OS or one specific to the ASUS C202X model that disables the trackpad? Reason being that I had a report a few days ago of a Chromebook with a non-functioning trackpad, so I go to fetch it and sure enough it doesn't work. I've replaced it with a spare with a functioning one (and I've tested it to be sure) only to get a report of the replacement now not having a functioning trackpad and I wonder if our students know how to disable these somehow. But it does only seem to be one it's happening to. I've checked our device settings and this one isn't getting anything different to the others so I'm a bit stumped as to why this is happening. I'm also slightly loathed to replace it with a third spare if it's likely to happen again. EDIT: I tell a lie, this is the third one that's come back in this state, the first one it started working again after leaving the battery to go flat and charge it up again.

You only get the slot if you pick the option that fills it with something when you buy them. I bought a Vostro 3560 back in 2013 but didn't buy it with a mSata drive simply because it was that much more expensive but I simply thought that I could just fill the slot later when I could afford it but like these 3190s, it didn't come with the slot. My guess is that Dell don't put it there for 2 reasons: 1. Cost. 2. It allows them to sell you a different model later down the line. I like Dell for a lot of reasons, this not being one of them.

I'm unsure what ones you ended up with but the Dell 3190s that turned up on our doorstep came with 120GB m.2 Sata SSDs though the cheapest ones come with 64GB eMMC storage. The Geobooks can be upgraded with m.2 drives but unfortunately don't come with them. Also, I've noticed the casing that's used by Dynabook seems similar to that used by Geobook.

Yes, I forgot how 'frankenstein' these laptops were. I was fairly sure none had glossy screens but then it may have been one I was in a rush in getting out to a Student so didn't notice.

Recently had a bunch of these back from Students, one of which has come back with a glossy screen! Since they all had matte screens when they were given out I suspect one Student has had an accident with one and the Parents have clearly gone to all the trouble of replacing it.

In case someone has a faulty HP laptop from the DfE, HP are honouring the warranty from their end now (assuming they didn't before) and are upgrading any remaining warranty from RTB to Onsite due to Brexit (or so they told me.)

I bought one of these last year to use at home. It has no control or monitoring on the PoE ports despite it being a smart managed switch (a similar D-Link one I bought to replace it has), I experienced frequent dropouts on random ports and I thought the fan was quite noisy despite claims in the documentation that it was supposed to be quiet. Never again.

One thing I'd noticed and was surprised about while opening one up to retrieve a lost SD card, that these laptops have a M.2 slot so there is the ability to expand the internal storage if someone wanted to. Not something I'd ever expect to see on bargain-basement Chinese laptops.

Bark ..

I had the same issue, but with an ASUS one. It suddenly stopped working and nothing I tried (similar to you) at the time worked so I was advised by the supplier to log the fault in ASUS's support portal as these are still under warranty and I can't open them up ideally. This was before Christmas and I never managed to log a warranty return request as their support portal seemed rather slow to access and attempts to log anything would keep kicking me out, so I decided to leave it over the holiday and pick that up again in January. Except I didn't. I picked it up to test something else on it knowing full well I'd have to plug a mouse in to do anything useful and noticed that the battery had gone flat over the holiday. No worries I thought, I'll just plug it in to the mains and with that as it started up, I saw that it was displaying a mouse cursor. Yes, it's working fine again. No idea why but I guess letting the battery go flat cleared something out allowing the touchpad to be re-detected somehow? I also wondered if there is a bug in a recent version of ChromeOS which causes this but I've nothing conclusive. It may be worth a try however.

All of our 36 (well 35 now as one won't power up anymore and is waiting to go back) are GE114 models & they all PXE booted fine using the Startech USB adapter too. Another irritating thing I've noticed is that on a couple that have come in, the screens dim for a while then go back to full brightness again regardless whether on battery or mains and you can't do anything about it.

I wasn't sure. I deleted the project and then followed @Danp 's instructions above and then it suddenly worked. I think it has something to do with getting the right URL you paste into the code, as I noticed this often changes depending on what you do in the Project. EDIT: ...or permissions it seems. I don't remember it asking me that either the first time.

Oo, my new username shows up on old posts, but not on quoted replies. Sorry. I wasn't trying to be but I have so much going on at the moment and I'm getting rather stressed out as a result.

Yep, it works now. Thanks.

What was it you had to do to get it to work? I've still got the code set up in a project but I just couldn't get past that error, and when it said to add the Google Classroom API as a library, I couldn't find its ID but added it in using the Service selector below the Library one but I don't know if that was the right way to do it or not.

Odd. Wonder why?

Well, it would have been nice to have had a simple tool for administering Classroom but unfortunately when I run the project, I just get "Script function not found: doGet" and I've given up as I don't have the time to try and troubleshoot why.

An annoying thing I've just found - the SD card slots don't line up with the cases properly, so it is possible and very easy to lose a SD card inside the case.

This reminds me of a similar phenomenon that I noticed once in my Parents old Vauxhall Cavalier where by the radio when tuned to Medium or Long Wave would pick up the rotations of the engine through similar static beats. That I think was caused by a bad ground from the speakers and I wonder if this is a similar scenario with the chromebook where it too had a bad ground within it's audio system and picking up something like a fan in a nearby convector heater or somesuch. I know Lenovo for example are notorious for not adding grounds where they're actually needed like the many millions of B50 Essentials notebooks where a missing ground on the touchpad means that the mouse cursor jumps around the screen a lot. Is it possible to try another chromebook or even another laptop of a different type in the same location?

Their 'Status Dashboard' shows an orange circle under GMail so maybe they were still having issues with that.

Sort of, logging into a Chromebook now produces a "You are not authorized to sign into this device" error.

Yep, users get "Couldn't find your Google Account" when they try to sign in.