I bought a Chromebook and have been using it/testing it out before actually giving it to my mother. This weekend, I tried to create a recovery disk and hook it up to an external monitor. Here’s how it went.
Recovery disk
The Chromebook help page covers how to create a USB drive with a bootable ChomeOS recovery disk. It took me a few tries though:
- Inserted 8GB USB flash drive into Chromebook and went to chrome://imageburner. A third of the way through the 300-400 MB download it would fail with an unclear error message.
- Tried Chrome OS Image Creator on Mac. However it asks for a model number like “Sams Alex2 Gamma0-US 1234.”. I emailed the “Chrome Ninja Team” (google support) as I would like to know the answer to this. I then guessed one and tried to download onto USB. Same error. I’ve used this USB drive for other things but maybe it is the drive.
- Tried a 4GB USB flash drive and created recovery disk successfully.
How to find your chromebook model #
Per the Ninja team, if your machine still works, you can enter:
chrome://system (which shows a lot of interesting other info too; at least interesting if you are a geek)
How to find your chromebook model # – approach 2
Per the Ninja team (parens are mine)
- Follow the steps 1 – 4 via this link http://support.google.com/
chromeos/a/bin/answer.py?hl= (I didn’t feel the switch move but it clearly did. I hadn’t shut down fully (or knocked into the power button while doing this and had to do this twice.)en&answer=1360642 - Step 5) Press the space bar and then you will be able to see your model number. (This worked.)
- (Flip switch back and restart – I got prompted for my internet connection again and given the welcome message so I think it did a partial reset. But all settings are in the cloud so this isn’t a big deal.)
External monitor
My goal was to hook up the tiny 12.1 inch Chromebook screen to an external monitor. I already have a VGA cable. The Chromebook does not have a VGA or HDMI port. Check what your model has. Mine has a Display Port. I learned it isn’t easy to buy a Display Port to VGA adapter. Here’s what happened:
- Radio Shack: Sells mini display port adapter because Mac’s use it. (I already have one of these)
- PC Richard: “That doesn’t exist; tvs use wifi now.” (Not true and useless advice)
- Best Buy: Sells same things as Radio Shack. Recommends buying it online
- B and H: I suspect B and H does have this adapter in stock. The trains aren’t fully running yet so I don’t feel the need to go into Manhattan to find out. And they were closed today anyway for the holiday.
- Amazon: I bought this on Amazon. Will find out how it works in a few days.