Last week, I was playing with different settings for Chrome OS Laptop given by Google (also called CR 48). While playing with various settings, I changed the UI language from English US to Hindi (Indian Language). At the time of change, it worked correctly and I could browse through internet pages. But after I restart the laptop, the machine seem to hang. What I mean by hang is Chrome browser was responding (UI) but if I try to open any page (including any internet page or even settings or about page from browser wrench icon), So, I couldn’t even restore the UI language to English. I tried to restart the machine couple of times in hope that it will recover but it did not.
So, I thought I will need to “format” the machine and start from scratch. Because all the data lives in the cloud (including browser and OS settings), I was less worried about the data (which was actually good and big relief!)
I started searching for resources on how to format the machine and re-install the OS again! I could not find any useful information but after reading a lot of information, I found this page on Google Chrome OS help. Tried the instructions and they worked. I’ve copied the instructions (for windows platform) here as well.
- Click this link to download the image: https://dl.google.com/dl/chromeos/recovery/cr48-beta-recovery
- Extract the .bin file from the .zip you just downloaded (e.g.
chromeos__x86-mario_recovery_beta-channel_mp.bin). - Download a Windows image writer tool (e.g. Image Writer for Windows Note - when using this tool you may have to manually rename the image file to end in '.img' )
- Follow the instructions in the image writer tool and choose the download binary file (e.g.
chromeos__x86-mario_recovery_beta-channel_mp.img) to burn to a USB disk.
Once you have the USB disk ready, plug it into Chrome OS laptop and cold boot the machine. It will wipe out everything from the machine and re-install the Chrome OS.